Guild Wars 2

Life Siphon (Dagger #2) should be more like:
Transfusion; Vladimir’s Q skill from League of Legends. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fxYhRIoeB04
I’m not necessarily saying that it should become instant cast but it can have something like a 1/2 – 3/4 second cast time where it then hits for a substantial amount (Probably something like what currently a full channel would be) and heals for half of that amount since now the healing would be done instantly instead of over the extended period of 3.5 seconds.

So for example if a realistic siphon currently would be around 4-5k damage over 3.5 seconds with healing of 3-4k depending on your healing power. You’d still hit the same amount, over 1/2 – 3/4 seconds, but instead you’d heal 1.5-2k. I’d say lowering the cooldown would be fine as now it would be a single shot skill and the trade-off would be that it can be FULLY negated more easily. It would just be a needed improvement to the dagger skills so that now it could actually be used in the DPS rotation instead of just autoing.

Also in case this may seem OP to some, keep in mind that now while yes it becomes a bursty skill and not a channeled one what this means is that it can be more easily blocked, evaded or otherwise negated meaning you wouldn’t get any partial effect like you would with the current iteration of the skill.

I don’t mind the channel time, personally. What I mind is how you lose so much DPS and don’t even heal for that much. Without several lifesteal traits to back up Life Siphon’s 9 hits, it heals for bubkis; with them, it’s only kindasorta ok. I’d prefer for the number of hits to go down (to normalize the skill between vampire and non-vampire builds) and for the damage and healing to go up so it would feel really good to use the skill rather than just something to kill time with if I’m ever forced to back away from a boss mob for a few seconds.

I prefer that Dagger 2nd skill be instant with total damage/healing instead of channeled

Blaine Tog.8304:

I don’t mind the channel time, personally. What I mind is how you lose so much DPS and don’t even heal for that much. Without several lifesteal traits to back up Life Siphon’s 9 hits, it heals for bubkis; with them, it’s only kindasorta ok. I’d prefer for the number of hits to go down (to normalize the skill between vampire and non-vampire builds) and for the damage and healing to go up so it would feel really good to use the skill rather than just something to kill time with if I’m ever forced to back away from a boss mob for a few seconds.

Try building some healing power instead of insisting Necros scale badly with it. Necros have some of the best scaling in the entire game with Healing Power and Life Siphon works out to heal for more health/second than Consume Conditions had pre-nerf.

Yes, that’s a weapon skill that acts as a second heal skill. It’s easy for me to heal up 9k with Life Siphon in between casts of Consume Conditions. That’s not “healing bubkis”

The issue with the skill is how long you spend casting it. You’re often gonna lose more health than you gain while casting it. The cast time needs to be shaved down to 2 or 2.5 seconds.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Try building some healing power instead of insisting Necros scale badly with it. Necros have some of the best scaling in the entire game with Healing Power and Life Siphon works out to heal for more health/second than Consume Conditions had pre-nerf.

Yes, that’s a weapon skill that acts as a second heal skill. It’s easy for me to heal up 9k with Life Siphon in between casts of Consume Conditions. That’s not “healing bubkis”

Seems I’ve touched a nerve. I never said anything about Necros and healing power, and certainly not in this thread. Looking at the wiki page, it does seem that it scales pretty well with healing power. That said, it still scales pretty terribly with Power. I’d be fine with the current level of healing for Power builds if it weren’t also such a heavy DPS drop.

Blaine Tog.8304:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Try building some healing power instead of insisting Necros scale badly with it. Necros have some of the best scaling in the entire game with Healing Power and Life Siphon works out to heal for more health/second than Consume Conditions had pre-nerf.

Yes, that’s a weapon skill that acts as a second heal skill. It’s easy for me to heal up 9k with Life Siphon in between casts of Consume Conditions. That’s not “healing bubkis”

Seems I’ve touched a nerve. I never said anything about Necros and healing power, and certainly not in this thread. Looking at the wiki page, it does seem that it scales pretty well with healing power. That said, it still scales pretty terribly with Power. I’d be fine with the current level of healing for Power builds if it weren’t also such a heavy DPS drop.

It currently only is a DPS drop because dagger is the only closerange option we have for dps. The design of the dagger skillset its a tanky / defensive weapon, dagger dagger having a lot of defensive measures. Its just neccesary for dagger to have the best AA currently because there is a lack of an alternative.

Dagger 2 would be really nice with a channel time drop, while it is a DPS loss the issue isn’t so much the fact that it deals low damage overall, but that it takes an absolutely ridiculous amount of time to channel. It’d probably still be a damage loss, which is fine because it can heal for as much as a healing skill with investment, but at least it wouldn’t be such a large drop.

Though I do think Vladimir/Aatrox have good mechanics that could be brought over, on the idea of sacrificing health to build up a stacking mechanic to make yourself stronger.

Aatrox is pretty much the ideal model for a siphon build: If you don’t lock him down or limit his healing, he will out-sustain whatever you’re throwing at him.

I think I would enjoy a buff to the skill solely for the fact that dagger AA gets boring, and the fact that using #2 #3 drop my DPS with no good return is kind of saddening. I like the idea of a faster drain, that might actually encourage me to use the skill

losing dps in order to get health back while being open for counterplay sounds totally correct to me

Xyonon.3987:

losing dps in order to get health back while being open for counterplay sounds totally correct to me

While that makes sense, it doesn’t work the way it should. The amount of health you gain doesn’t make it worth it to use that skill in the first place.

Matt Stacey.7415:

Xyonon.3987:

losing dps in order to get health back while being open for counterplay sounds totally correct to me

While that makes sense, it doesn’t work the way it should. The amount of health you gain doesn’t make it worth it to use that skill in the first place.

Well it’s a 3k heal on a fairly low cd, it’s not too much but it’s “ok”. Sure it could be more, but that’d be just “nice to have” but not required to declare this skill as useful. In my humble opinion at least.

Xyonon.3987:

Matt Stacey.7415:

Xyonon.3987:

losing dps in order to get health back while being open for counterplay sounds totally correct to me

While that makes sense, it doesn’t work the way it should. The amount of health you gain doesn’t make it worth it to use that skill in the first place.

Well it’s a 3k heal on a fairly low cd, it’s not too much but it’s “ok”. Sure it could be more, but that’d be just “nice to have” but not required to declare this skill as useful. In my humble opinion at least.

To be honest, I think the time you are getting hit during the channel far outweighs the measly ~3k HP

Matt Stacey.7415:

Xyonon.3987:

Matt Stacey.7415:

Xyonon.3987:

losing dps in order to get health back while being open for counterplay sounds totally correct to me

While that makes sense, it doesn’t work the way it should. The amount of health you gain doesn’t make it worth it to use that skill in the first place.

Well it’s a 3k heal on a fairly low cd, it’s not too much but it’s “ok”. Sure it could be more, but that’d be just “nice to have” but not required to declare this skill as useful. In my humble opinion at least.

To be honest, I think the time you are getting hit during the channel far outweighs the measly ~3k HP

Not if you’re playing it right. It’s 600 range and doesn’t require facing once the channel starts. It’s actually quite easy to avoid heavy damage while channeling.

It does need a cast time reduction, but the effects of the skill are pretty much perfect as-is.

Too bad the pluses are useless in PvE.

They just need to give it the rapid fire treatment. Increase the damage a bit, halve the cast.

Abilities with cooldowns should not be a DPS loss to mere autoattacking. Increasing the effective DPS of the skill also increases the value of Quickening Thirst indirectly.

Quickening Thirst right now is only useful for the running speed aspect since the dagger cooldown abilities themselves are nothing to write home about. Increasing the value of #2 and #3 would change that.

Both dagger 2 and 3 takes an eternity to cast

Completely agree, dagger would be infinitely better for pve and pvp if life siphon wasn’t a channel, but instead a single target big hitting siphon that did great damage. This skill sucks, if the healing or damage was actually good people would interrupt it. Since, people rarely blow interrupts on it, that says something.

Also, it might heal for 5k with healing power, but people deal 5k damage easily in that time. Before you say, “it is 600 range though,” realize every class has good 600+ range options except maybe war, and all of them can close the gap and deal more than 5k damage in the 4 seconds it takes the skill to channel. That means you need to setup this skill to land the full channel and get a lot of benefit, which is absolutely ridiculous considering it is the #2 skill on a weapon.

Zenith.7301:

Abilities with cooldowns should not be a DPS loss to mere autoattacking.

I agree with everything but this. Abilities with cooldowns and secondary effects other than damage can be designed so that those secondary effects are why the ability is used, not the damage. For instance, death pact; I want to use it for the immobilize, not just the damage. Designing so that every ability does more damage than the auto attack also gives rise to simply using every ability as soon as it recharges, which is whack-a-mole without the random spawn points. The chain system for auto attacks is interesting, or could be made more so with more effects on them (for instance, the Daredevil whirl on staff).

Unfortunately, the reverse is currently the issue with dagger MH. You almost only want to just auto attack, with casts of Locust Swarm whenever you can. : ( I’m sure there’s a healthy middle ground, such as what you said: reducing the channel and increasing the damage of siphon (and pooooossibly changing the health threshold of Quickening Thirst).

How about making it a fire-and-forget debuff. Same duration, same damage, same healing, but not a channel. You can autoattack during it. That would increase the dagger’s single target damage which would help differentiate it from the GS.

Khristophoros.7194:

How about making it a fire-and-forget debuff. Same duration, same damage, same healing, but not a channel. You can autoattack during it. That would increase the dagger’s single target damage which would help differentiate it from the GS.

That … hmm. That actually sounds workable. Perhaps a 1s cast that applies a 3s duration “Life Siphon” effect to the target, damaging/healing 3x per second? Might need to tune the damage down some. It being a DPS increase would encourage spamming it on recharge, but if mainhand dagger is supposed to be a sustain/attrition weapon, why shouldn’t you be constantly using a skill that damages your enemy and heals you? There would also be a bit of an incentive to save it until you’ve taken at least a little damage, so you don’t waste the healing.

Necro siphons should be % based off damage. Like 1-5% of your damage is siphoned.