Guild Wars 2

Please update the amount of damage life siphon does and the amount of health it rewards you. Without this, I find the necromancer unplayable, imo. I don’t like minions and not a huge fan of wells. Life siphon should be a major skill component of a necro battle tactics – or a specific build itself. I’m not sure how some of the trait lines even fit together. I think it should reorganized into skills that make more sense together.

just one of way to many things that are way to weak for the necro

It is, just like every other one of our builds having a few things to make it ineffective. Though yeah I would’ve loved to play a bursty dagger build necro that simply survived of lifesteal….sadly elementalists and thieves both of which have better CC, dmg and escape mechanisms have better lifesteal signets…both of which, unlike life siphon, stack with healing power as far as I know.

You can’t compare them like that, both thieves and elementalists sacrifice their healing
utility slot in order to have on hit healing effects.

Necromancers get the effect by using minor/major traits.

Wich heal the enemy and dont stack with Healing Power.
Yeah, id rather be a Thief/Ele.

Dulon.9347 – only that thieves can put it down to a 12 second downtime making it one of the most efficient over time healing effects and eles have a trait to have it on permanently, not to mention the fact that unlike all other healing effects (except the guardian gs hit heal) our do not scale with healing power with the 0.125 efficient, nor with power/damage delt (what it should since its stealing the life of the enemy…)

That’s another thing, it’s supposed to steal life. That would mean it does damage too
and the other classes simply heal on hit.

If that is indeed the case and it would scale, you’d have a healing effect that scales
with +power or damage that scales with +healing.

The Bloodthirst trait is probably supposed to make up for the fact that the
Necromancer’s passive life siphon doesn’t scale with anything.

Andele.1306:

Dulon.9347 – not to mention the fact that unlike all other healing effects (except the guardian gs hit heal) our do not scale with healing power with the 0.125 efficient, nor with power/damage delt (what it should since its stealing the life of the enemy…)

It already does a bit of damage tbh, you’ll see that as a small number flying off similar to bleeding.
I always thought, wouldn’t it be cool if it would reduce damage, but that damage is instead added as a siphon?
Reduces damage by 5% and instead siphons -fixed ammount +0,5% of damage done-

life siphon does scale with healing power but it doesnt scale a lot..if you don’t believe me get a cleric neckie and equip it you ll see it ups the siphon by 35+ or so..

they should be careful with moves like siphon tho becaue dagger is already the strongest weapon a necro has.. on my support necro it heals 9×418 (380+38)3762? as a free thing aint that bad for something that does a bit of damage also if they start giving power necros 500×9 heals every 16 seconds wich can be reduced with dagger skill 15% off and wich at the same time can hit for up to 4k damage on the enemy things might becomes unbalanced quick..

Dulon.9347:

You can’t compare them like that, both thieves and elementalists sacrifice their healing
utility slot in order to have on hit healing effects.

Necromancers get the effect by using minor/major traits.

Yes I can, because of the necromancers “niches” is the ability to tank by siphoning things….And as someone said, the thieves almost has very little cooldown. Though the big thing, and what makes it ultra effective on the thief is how many fast hitting attack and bouncing attacks the thief has making it absolutely ridiculous. Just with the shortbows auto attack it’s healing for 300 per hit no healing power. With dagger storm you can be unkillable if you are not too squishy due to it.

The elementalist is not as good as the thieves to be completely honest, and is not needed because ele’s already have too many heals and attack too slow with the staff, and for a dagger build you usually go a build with a lot of regen in the first place that it is not necessary but a good bonus nevertheless, but ultimately it’s better than necros.

I do not see how either of those classes sacrifice a utility slot for it since both of those signets are on short cooldowns. And it just makes more sense to me that of all the squishy classes, the necromancer should be the one based on stealing health and regen, and it does seem that way except our abilities are either too weak or too unsynergized. Anddd sacrificing 20 trait points is as important as a utility slot (if we assume for the sake of arguments ele/thieves are sacrificing the utility slot), if not more…it’s hard for someone playing a necro to notice that because our traits are complete garbage so we generally think of traits as tiny tiny tiny buffs…

Really, it doesn’t do enough damage? It is our highest damaging move! Mine crits for 4.5k almost every time I use it, thats as much as life transfer. Sure its not the 9k a thief can do in one hit, but thats pretty high for us

You could play a tank life siphon necro and simply use all available forms of life leech
and what improves it.

As in Vampiric, Vampiric Precision, Vampiric Rituals, Bloodthirst, Omnomberry Pies,
Sigil of Blood, Sigil of Leeching and Runes of Vampirism.

Get decent toughness, vitality, precision and power.

Use Weapons with a fast attack rate to take advantage of all those possible on hit /
weapon switch effects. (Dagger main hand and Axe main hand)

I can’t tell if it’s better than a thief or elementalist trying it, but it’s playable. And fun.

Levian.6742:

Really, it doesn’t do enough damage? It is our highest damaging move! Mine crits for 4.5k almost every time I use it, thats as much as life transfer. Sure its not the 9k a thief can do in one hit, but thats pretty high for us

He’s talking about the Vampiric traits.
Also, it is slow as kitten. compar eit to Lifeblast or Dagger1 and it is REALLY weak in terms of DPS

We have to remember too that life siphon can’t be compared to a thief or ele’s signet heal, that heals when you hit. They have to slot a completely different heal just for that effect, and the active portion is generally really weak.

While we can have life siphoning AND the amazing well of blood. Yes I do feel that life siphon is weak. I’m not 100% sure if it is though as I haven’t done the math and it’s hard to accurately test out without there being some way to see your healing done in the mists without being hurt.

Who knows, if you use wells that siphon health, and siphon on hit AND on crit, it could be pretty effective overall. Added with certain foods and runes it MAY just be viable. Anyone tested this properly?

Dulon.9347:

You could play a tank life siphon necro and simply use all available forms of life leech
and what improves it.

As in Vampiric, Vampiric Precision, Vampiric Rituals, Bloodthirst, Omnomberry Pies,
Sigil of Blood, Sigil of Leeching and Runes of Vampirism.

Get decent toughness, vitality, precision and power.

Use Weapons with a fast attack rate to take advantage of all those possible on hit /
weapon switch effects. (Dagger main hand and Axe main hand)

I can’t tell if it’s better than a thief or elementalist trying it, but it’s playable. And fun.

Don’t you find it a bit ridiculous that for a necro to be on par with a thief he needs to invest some 4-5 specific skills/traits to do what a thief can do with just 1 skill with a very short cooldown? Probably can’t do as well as a thief.

I play both a necro and a thief with the idea of regen on hit in mind, for my necro I have heal on crit, vampiric trait to heal on hit, wells recharge 20% faster and wellls heal with each tick.

Just the heal on hit and crit alone, unless we’re using a dagger we’ll heal less then 100HP a second even if we manage to get repeated critical hits. Adding wells adds I believe to be some 38HP per tick to the equation, and it’s still not as good what a thief can do with just about any weapon available to him. With the dagger autoattack he can heal some 300 HP a second with ONE ability dedicated to this, while we with 3 still can’t do the same. Even with slower weapons such as the pistols and sword he still heals more, AND if he uses anything other than the auto attack he heals even more per second since most of his other attacks hit faster, while for us the auto attack is the fastest hitting thing we got.

Sad thing is we fail in comparison to just about any class, the thief, the elementalist, the guardian (obviously). We even fail in comparison to the mesmer! A 30point major trait the mesmer has heals about 1150HP each time he uses a shattering skill, he’s able to use 4 shattering skills one after the other, has a variety of way of recharging them and they’re all on short cooldown. For us to heal 1150HP we’d have to stay hitting an enemy for some 45 seconds (since our wells don’t stay up 100% of the time you can’t count on the well healing skill too much).

It’s pathetic, our health syphon is simply laughable.

Just think that a Thief, when traited in Shadow Arts (Shadow’s Rejuvenation and Shadow Protector), can be healed for 500+ hp per second while in Stealth only with the +300 healing power provided by the traitline, this means that Shadow Refuge will actually refill your life bar. I didn’t tested it out with more Healing Power.

It needs to not just scale with +healing better but just heal for more as a base. Life siphon is a joke of a skill. Its easily interrupted by others or the caster. The 206 hp a tick is nothing compared to my 21k health. Even if you got every rune and sigil to help with draining life or restoring life you are devoting every resource to a very weak build over all since almost everyone other will be able to out damage your heal returns.

Also another tread already talked about it.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Vampiric-Knight-Would-this-work/first#post645472

The thing is, we compare the thief and elementalist abilities to ours because it’s a heal on hit, which is what our class was so bragged about doing. We’re less then them in something we should be masters at – and in the end, compared to every other class (not sure about the warrior or ranger) if we focus ourselves on healing, we will under perform.

If we use everything available, what do you think should be the maximum of life per hit we should be able to leech?

I think you can average something like 150-220 right now.

So 400-500?

1) I’m pretty sure the necromancer isn’t about great healing. Don’t forget we have life force (deathshroud).

2) Thief and Elementalists have a base health of ~10k. I suppose you could ask to lower the Necromancer’s max hp, but why not just play those classes if you want heals? (Note, when their signet is on cool-down, they don’t gain its passive benefit which some of you are insinuating)

3) And if you do basic math, the Vampiric Minor trait is about equivalent to a 5-10% dmg buff for power builds (ignoring criticals). That is, 5% in dmg + 5% in heals. It’s even better depending on the weapons you’re using.

Popular Elementalist builds right now include 30 Earth to make the signet passive permanent, or 20 Water/20 Arcane to provide almost constant regen, lots of burst healing, and lots of condition cleanses.

Stormy O.7025:

1) I’m pretty sure the necromancer isn’t about great healing. Don’t forget we have life force (deathshroud).

2) Thief and Elementalists have a base health of ~10k. I suppose you could ask to lower the Necromancer’s max hp, but why not just play those classes if you want heals? (Note, when their signet is on cool-down, they don’t gain its passive benefit which some of you are insinuating)

3) And if you do basic math, the Vampiric Minor trait is about equivalent to a 5-10% dmg buff for power builds (ignoring criticals). That is, 5% in dmg + 5% in heals. It’s even better depending on the weapons you’re using.

This still doesn’t justify that a class that has traits and traitlines named with “blood” and “Vampiric” underperforms in those acts compared to a class tha tis suppossed to be the epitome of glass cannon. Thiefs can outheal most damage bursts from anyone but warriors and thieves themselves.
This should not be the case.
The Necromancer’s Blood Magic traitline is supposed to be themed around transfering life from one being to another.
I’d love to see at least an inditect healing skill while in DS, allowing us to heal people while consumind LF.
Also, just look at the Eles soothing mist, which costs him 5 Traitpoints: it heals ridicolous ammounts passively to anyone around all the time! The formula is Lvl + 5% of healing!
Of course, we get health for every Enemy hit, but let’s run some math:
Assuming 50% critchance and 30 points in Bloodmagic. Vampiric Precission, Bloodthirst and Vampiric Rituals. Assuming Vampiric Rituals work with Bloodthirst (which is not the case)
Best case scenario:
Well of suffering, since it also counts as an attack, every pule can crit on its own, 5 enemies in vicinity.
5 × 40 = 200 for Vampiric
5 × 60 = 300 for Precission
5 × 63 = 315 for Vampiric rituals
815 Every Second
4075 for the entife 5 seconds.
While we are sorrounded by 5 enemies. We will most likely loose that ammount during that time anyway! I’vre run a full Knight’s build and tried this with all 4 wells and always came out even, except with Well of Blood for obvious reasons.
Around lvl 80 you’ll always come out even in best case scenarios with Vampiric traits. It helps you to regenrate a few HP if in a pinch, but attacking always mean being in danger of getting attacked again. Also, Daggers (most logical for such a build) require you to be in range!
I healed around 350 hp per pulse with Dagger2 and I barely kept THAT! The 400 toughness while channeling from DM didn’t do much either. Right now the Necromancer is outperformed by Every class.
I hear Guardians and Rangers, even Thieves whining every day, how bad their clas sis and it just makes me SICK how these people perform. I recently saw a Thief down an enemy within 3 seconds that I took at least 15 for and I only saw him use Heartseeker once. I just don’t know anymore.
I see all classe susing insane ammounts of awesome Skills for mobility and controll, while all we have are skills that are mandatory for our rotation!
This cannot be fair!
It used to be fun to go into DS, now it’s mandatory to just start doing damage!
I don’t demand insane bursts, I just demand 3 simple things (yes I am repeating myself!)

1. Give the Necro to Attrition based Damage we were promised!
2. Give the Necro the ability to las tlong enough to get it in fights!
3. Give the Necro the means to reap what he sows!

EDIT: I just realized something that would make Necro’s lifestealing possible without OP:
If the Necor gains LF whith a full LF pool, he instead gains Health.
Could be Minor Trait or basic Necro Passive.

Does it even matter what we think anymore?

Anet has yet to make any changes to the necro, only minor stupid ones that no one even notices. Not only that but unless Anet has some knowledge dmbs with extreme amounts of data, then I doubt they are actually listing our concerns.

I feel like posting in the necro forum has less of an impact than voting in yesterday’s presidential election. No matter what we say they won’t listen.

If they want us to trade life steal for death shroud then they should drop the whole “down state” analog as actually give us access to our weapons and utilities. The DS state traits, like the area effect vulnerability and on entry fury, could still be in there, but the one that grants might and vulnerability to life blast could be moved onto weapons (staff 1 basically behaves like LB anyways).

Home Style.9640:

Does it even matter what we think anymore?

Anet has yet to make any changes to the necro, only minor stupid ones that no one even notices. Not only that but unless Anet has some knowledge dmbs with extreme amounts of data, then I doubt they are actually listing our concerns.

I feel like posting in the necro forum has less of an impact than voting in yesterday’s presidential election. No matter what we say they won’t listen.

Anet had a few posts from Jon a week or two ago about how they were looking into the issues we discuss a lot on here.

I’ve played a life-siphoning necro for probably 2 months and I’m not sure what you guys are on about, it works very well for me. I don’t play sPvP but in PvE I can take 5+ mobs at once, and in WvW I regularly get multiple kills before I go down.

One string of dagger 1 attacks heals for 250. One cast of dagger 2 heals for 340 * 8 (skill) + 38 * 8 (vampiric) + 51 * 4 (vampiric precision) = about 3.2k health on a 12s cooldown. If I have Locust Swarm on all those hits and crits will siphon life to me too.

Just in case you guys care, here are some tips for playing a siphoning necro:

Don’t trait for wells. They don’t last very long and will only siphon 240 health (with Vampiric Rituals) AT BEST against a single opponent, that’s less than a single dagger 1 autoattack chain. Put just 20 points into Blood Magic and take Bloodthirst and Vampiric Precision. If you want to use a well as one of your utilities that is fine, but the trait points are better spent elsewhere.

Going along with the above tip, use gear with power and precision in it. I am currently experimenting with Rampager’s because I am trying to make my staff more useful, but Knight’s or Berserker’s are also excellent choices.

Use Spectral Walk or Spectral Armor as one of your utilities. One of their effects is that you gain 3% life force on hit. As soon as DS runs out, use one of those abilities and watch your life force skyrocket. Re-engage DS as soon as you can, now you’ve gotten to use it two or even three times in one fight.

Use things that will help you in melee, since that’s where you’ll be with a dagger mainhand, since that’s what you’ll be using for a life siphon build. Last Gasp, warhorn offhand, toughness, abilities that inflict Weakness (Weakening Shroud is godly).

Sure, the siphon “works”. But it still remains that other professions get more bang out of a easily replaceable utility slot while we have to head for a city and dump money into a npc if we want to stop using our traits (sure, the major ones can be swapped between fights. But rarely do you get two builds that can live on the exact same trait lines).

…I’m not really sure what point you’re trying to make. All classes have to go to a city to retrain traits. What utilities are you referring to specifically, can you elaborate?

Thief has a signet he can opt for in the healing utility slot that grants 100+healing power on every hit as a passive, and a heal on activation with a 15 second cooldown.

Meaning that out of fight he can pop in any other healing utility if he feels it does not work for him, anywhere in the world.

If i want to set up my necromancer for vampiric healing, i need to drop at 10-15 points into blood magic, and if i want to change a large part of that i can’t do it in the field like the thief swapping his utility. I need to head back to the nearest area with a profession trainer, fork over some silver and set all my traits again (i could potentially attempt to adapt the major trait slots for different uses, but that is rarely effective).

Also note that say the thief trick shot (short bow 1) attacks as fast as necromancer dagger 1, is ranged, and bounces between targets. Meaning that each shot near a group is likely to land the thief 300+healing power each 0.25 second. That is almost 1000 each second just from the utility passive.

Never mind that he can temporarily withdraw from the fight by stealth, something that can be traited to heal and remove conditions.

In comparison going death shroud means the necromancer is still in the fight, but has lost access to all weapons and utility skills (outside of the 4 that DS offer) and do not heal.

In essence the thief appears to make a better vampire than the necromancer, and can swap in and out of that role between fights.

I disagree with your analysis. You seem to think that a thief needing to spend 30 points and a utility slot to be an effective vampire is somehow preferable to us only needing to spend 10-15 points (I’d argue 20). How is spending more to achieve the same thing better?

The healing on attack signet is nice, and so is the flexibility on switching it out, but that only works on his basic attacks, right? Necro siphon works on pretty much every ability we have and can also happen again on crit, that’s probably why our numbers are less. And if he’s using the signet, he can’t remove conditions very effectively unless he’s in stealth, so put poison on him and laugh as your autoattacks are now siphoning for more than his. If he puts poison on you, just transfer it right back.

And if he switches it out, he’s not siphoning life at all, so he automatically becomes a worse vampire. Ours is traited, meaning we can use whatever heal we want and still enjoy the siphoning. Again, how is the thief being forced to use a specific heal to be a vampire better?

If he does go into stealth, you have options to draw him out or chase him away. Enfeebling blood, marks, DS 4, all of those have terrific AoE effects while also defending you. Cast Chillblains on his Shadow Refuge and rub your belly with amusement.

None of the things you mentioned are comparable to the necromancer’s 3.2k healing on dagger 2, which is on a 12s cooldown.

Oh, and shortbow is not 1 attack every .25s, not even with quickness. It’s less than a second but not that quick. I’d say he can get 400-500 hp per second (being generous here) if hitting a group. But if he’s hitting a group of people, why don’t you just all go kill him? If you’re in a 1v1 fight he’s not going to use shortbow for the healing anyway, he’s going to use his dagger.

Lettuce, You COMPLETELY miss the point.
The Signet works on every hit.
And he does not need to use any other heal ever, since he just refills on attacks.
Thieves can just use roll for initiative for condition removal and even MORE attackspamming.
Oh, the 3,2k healing (I have 20 in BM and only achieve 2,8k btw!) is incredibly weak because it takes so painstakingly long, during which the Necro is easily interruptable and can’t use any other skills.
And last but not least: it’s not just about PvP, it’s also about PvE

None of the “Defensive” Spells you mention manage to catch a thief, they do maximum 2,4k damage and we can’t directly chase thieves when they are invisible and at best have slighlty postponing features, not “defensive”.
Either you run some highly situational build all the time or you never played against a proper Thief.

What i was trying to say is that Thiefs become effective vampires earlier in the game than a Necro, and also have access to more effective hard counters to harm than our infamous DS will ever offer. Never mind that a thief out of stealth can hit like a proverbial truck.

lettucemode.3789:

Use Spectral Walk or Spectral Armor as one of your utilities. One of their effects is that you gain 3% life force on hit.

You do mean WHEN hit, right? The passive effect on these is a defensive effect. You have to take damage to gain that LF.

lettucemode.3789:

None of the things you mentioned are comparable to the necromancer’s 3.2k healing on dagger 2, which is on a 12s cooldown.

What are you sacrificing for this heal? 3.2k health return on a 3.5 second channel, in which time you’ve hopefully either immobilized or are able to kite the attacker right? Because that window is enough time for 1-2 swings which completely overtake/offset the heal.

And what are you sacrificing in damage to get such a health return? How much damage are you doing during that channel?

Point I’m trying to make is, there are various ways to improve survivability, and daggers seem to have an identity crisis. ANet has somewhat implied a “link” between health return and daggers, the worst possible weapon for staying alive. It’s a high risk, high reward damage weapon (as is all close-range melee). But the main reward comes in the form of very high sustainable dps, which is neutered when reconfigured to heal you instead. Something is wrong if that 12 second cooldown is seen as a benefit of the skill. A fight which goes on long enough to pop 2-3 of those has gone way too long (excluding bosses of course).

I do mostly WvW (no sPvP) and fight thieves all the time. I’m on Sanctum of Rall and we’re up against Sea of Sorrows this week (2 weeks?). I think I’ve fought against some proper thieves.

Very few thieves I have fought use Roll for Initiative. Even if they do have RFI, it doesn’t cure Poison. As for the signet, most thieves I encounter use the stealth heal for big backstab crits.

I don’t understand your logic about the dagger 2 ability. 3k healing on 12s cooldown is weak? Doing 3k damage during that time is weak? I simply disagree.

I can take 5-6 mobs at a time in PvE and don’t have a problem tagging things in Orr.

You say that none of those abilities I mentioned help catch thieves. Well, I adjusted my expectations when fighting thieves. I simply don’t expect to kill them anymore unless they make a big mistake. It’d be nice to be able to catch them but when they can just drop Shadow Refuge and use their heal for 15s seconds of stealth….I stopped trying, really. As soon as they pop that I usually /bow and go do something else.

My build is 0/25/10/20/15, dagger/warhorn + staff. Power/precision gear.

Xander.7260:

You do mean WHEN hit, right? The passive effect on these is a defensive effect. You have to take damage to gain that LF.

Yep, when hit. You’re going to take the damage anyway, may as well gain life force at the same time.

Xander.7260:

lettucemode.3789:

None of the things you mentioned are comparable to the necromancer’s 3.2k healing on dagger 2, which is on a 12s cooldown.

What are you sacrificing for this heal? 3.2k health return on a 3.5 second channel, in which time you’ve hopefully either immobilized or are able to kite the attacker right? Because that window is enough time for 1-2 swings which completely overtake/offset the heal.

And what are you sacrificing in damage to get such a health return? How much damage are you doing during that channel?

It costs 20 points in Blood Magic and gear with precision on it. Yes, enemies are often chilled, immobilized, or crippled against me. With power and precision gear it can do 4k damage during the channel.

Oh, and lots of fights go on that long. Thieves if they use stealth a lot, guardians, engineers, defensively-traited warriors, and the like.

It needs to scale with power.

Life stealing = Character Level / 4 + Power * 0.006

That way at level 80 with 916 base power, your life stealing does 25 damage. What it currently does. But at 3000 power you have 38 damage life stealing, which gets bumped up to 57 with the trait. I think that is both fair and balanced.

EDIT: This is for life stealing on hit trait.

That’d be a nice little buff, chuiu, good idea.

lettucemode.3789:

Xander.7260:

You do mean WHEN hit, right? The passive effect on these is a defensive effect. You have to take damage to gain that LF.

Yep, when hit. You’re going to take the damage anyway, may as well gain life force at the same time.

Xander.7260:

lettucemode.3789:

None of the things you mentioned are comparable to the necromancer’s 3.2k healing on dagger 2, which is on a 12s cooldown.

What are you sacrificing for this heal? 3.2k health return on a 3.5 second channel, in which time you’ve hopefully either immobilized or are able to kite the attacker right? Because that window is enough time for 1-2 swings which completely overtake/offset the heal.

And what are you sacrificing in damage to get such a health return? How much damage are you doing during that channel?

It costs 20 points in Blood Magic and gear with precision on it. Yes, enemies are often chilled, immobilized, or crippled against me. With power and precision gear it can do 4k damage during the channel.

Oh, and lots of fights go on that long. Thieves if they use stealth a lot, guardians, engineers, defensively-traited warriors, and the like.

Yeah that’s a problem to me. My life siphon averages 9k/1.8k hp(stock heal), You’ve effectively dropped your dmg by about 50% for a 1400 hp gain. Even still, it is VERY situational because it depends on a dropped immo to ensure that a) it will not be dodged since that negates 4-5 of the 9 total ticks or b) is not outright interrupted / outranged. I don’t agree with channeled abilities in general in this game. There is too much mobility, as well as reactionary counters, to make something like this viable.

Wow, how are you getting 9k damage? 30 in spite, 30 in soul reaping, Berserker’s gear?

lettucemode.3789:

Wow, how are you getting 9k damage? 30 in spite, 30 in soul reaping, Berserker’s gear?

Mix of soldier/zerker plus Target the Weak

I have never seen dagger 2 hit for anywhere near 9k. I haven’t tried with max might and weakness on the enemy though, just with blood is power or life blast grants might. Mine crits for around 4.5k. I couldn’t even imagine having it hit for 9k. Video please?

lettucemode.3789:

I disagree with your analysis. You seem to think that a thief needing to spend 30 points and a utility slot to be an effective vampire is somehow preferable to us only needing to spend 10-15 points (I’d argue 20). How is spending more to achieve the same thing better?

The healing on attack signet is nice, and so is the flexibility on switching it out, but that only works on his basic attacks, right? Necro siphon works on pretty much every ability we have and can also happen again on crit, that’s probably why our numbers are less. And if he’s using the signet, he can’t remove conditions very effectively unless he’s in stealth, so put poison on him and laugh as your autoattacks are now siphoning for more than his. If he puts poison on you, just transfer it right back.

And if he switches it out, he’s not siphoning life at all, so he automatically becomes a worse vampire. Ours is traited, meaning we can use whatever heal we want and still enjoy the siphoning. Again, how is the thief being forced to use a specific heal to be a vampire better?

If he does go into stealth, you have options to draw him out or chase him away. Enfeebling blood, marks, DS 4, all of those have terrific AoE effects while also defending you. Cast Chillblains on his Shadow Refuge and rub your belly with amusement.

None of the things you mentioned are comparable to the necromancer’s 3.2k healing on dagger 2, which is on a 12s cooldown.

Oh, and shortbow is not 1 attack every .25s, not even with quickness. It’s less than a second but not that quick. I’d say he can get 400-500 hp per second (being generous here) if hitting a group. But if he’s hitting a group of people, why don’t you just all go kill him? If you’re in a 1v1 fight he’s not going to use shortbow for the healing anyway, he’s going to use his dagger.

Hmm, what 30 traits are you talking about? Thiefs signet is already better than us spending 20 traits, everything else the thief spends is an extra…and I dont see the point of your comparison that for a thief to be a vampire he has to pick that heal, while ours are traited so we have freedom in picking our heal….let me reverse that for you, our lifesteal is traited, while the thieves is a utility heal, thus he has freedom to put 20 traits where ever he wants as opposed to us. So…yeah…the door swings both ways.

Also, even d/d has a bouncing attack (#4), and yes a thief would use a shortbow in a 1v1 specifically against a necro to bounce between his pet, esp when he’s out of initiative….

3.2k heal on dagger? well it’s about 2k for me max IF im using a dagger which I rarely do outside of 1v1 against a melee class or someone CC’ed since the necro lacks the mobility to effective at melee but alright…., the thief has pistol barrage with no CD that can easily heal for 1k per cast, thief has other heals, escape mechanisms and higher damage…etc…again, all irrelevant.

This is a simple comparison, of the thieves passive lifesteal versus the necromancers and it’s general synergy with our abilities, not a comparison of our abilities, because if you want to open that door the necro is not comprable to the thief. The point still stands that the thieves lifesteal not only is much stronger than the necro’s, it has both better synergy (all thief attacks are quite fast, several bounce/multi-hit) and it scales better with stats than ours.

And I’ll repeat an argument I mentioned earlier; the only reason some of you do not seem to think 20 traits is much is because most of our traits give us a tiny benefit/no-benefit at all so traits to a necro are a minor thing…but for any other class 20 traits is as big as which heal skill you pick. Our heal skill is also probably one of our few skills I would call excellent which is why some of you also have this idea that a heal skill choice is much bigger/build affecting than 20 traits. Either way, as mentioned, a heal skill can be changed on the go opposed to 20 traits.

I’ll post a YouTube link when I get home

I’ll believe that when I see it xD

Like lettucemode, i have a necromancer life siphon build that works for me.

If thief and elementalists can do it noticably better, that’s nice for them, since they
should be pretty much unkillable in pve encounters at that point.

Levian.6742:

I have never seen dagger 2 hit for anywhere near 9k. I haven’t tried with max might and weakness on the enemy though, just with blood is power or life blast grants might. Mine crits for around 4.5k. I couldn’t even imagine having it hit for 9k. Video please?

Nay of the Ether.8913:

I’ll believe that when I see it xD

Here you go:

Xander.7260:

Levian.6742:

I have never seen dagger 2 hit for anywhere near 9k. I haven’t tried with max might and weakness on the enemy though, just with blood is power or life blast grants might. Mine crits for around 4.5k. I couldn’t even imagine having it hit for 9k. Video please?

Nay of the Ether.8913:

I’ll believe that when I see it xD

Here you go:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqgluEer9Ns

Very nice. Too bad is PvE, I was hoping you’d do 9k in sPvP thatd be amazing. And I agree with you that I hate our necro channels. I’d rather take a long cast with a big burst attack like other classes.

Then the crit bonus is way more effective, and toughness and crit and retalliation arent checked each part of the channel.

OK ill admit that was a nice bit of damage for that skill for a change. I am just so used to doing 3-4k with it I might just not want to accept it might do good damage if you are built around just a power build and crit. Now if only it didn’t need to be channeled or could not be interrupted by dodging, knockback, fear, etc it would be amazing.

I’d never use a channel in PvP, it’s worthless against anyone who isn’t already spent or about to die anyway. Getting channeled by a player is sorta like being taunted by them lol. “Hey look I’m willing to give up control of my skills for 3-4 seconds while fighting you!” Dagger 1 is much more reliable and will do roughly 10k crit in about a second. You can see the last hit there trailing for nearly 5k on its own in the vid.

Notice he had a fully charged sigil and buff foods going too, so that affects it a lot. I can prob get mine pretty high if I buff enough. I doubt I’ll ever hit 9k though cause i enjoy more survivability, I got about 10k more hp than that and I’m betting a good bit more defense too. All depends on how you prefer to play