Guild Wars 2

Luck sigil doesn’t do anything for the build, and I have enough toughness to survive a good bit in melee with soldier gear. You should experiment a bit more and assume less about what is going on.

Not to mention I highly doubt you’re sporting more than the standard traited armor/toughness if you indeed have 30k hp as you say… sounds like shaman/cleric/carrion action with full blood line there.

It’s about finding a balance, min/maxing for one particular attribute gets you only so far.

Does Healing Power aid to the life you get as you siphon?

yay 25hp ticks should make a dent on my 28k hp pool! healing power does technically help it, but it’s such a low number to begin with it really makes no difference. no point in going for life syphon imo.

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

Wow, nice. How did you manage to hit that high? I assume you have full exotics?

I haven’t geared my necro PvE yet and my damage experience has just been in sPvP where my max hit was around 4.5-5k with life siphon

barti.7685:

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..

thieves can hit for 8-9k with backstab, and spam heartseeker for uber dmg. the life siphoning mechanic is a necromancer’s way of taking damage and regenerating it. It means you have to trait into it to make it effective and doesn’t mean it is OP. we have two skills (weapon skills) that use healing power, staff2 and focus5. Our class is hugely lacking a real healing output.

Joystick.4103:

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

Only person here that plays necro me thinks… People need less theorycrafting and more practical necro application.

I agree with the poster who said this thread was totally novel, haha

Basically, vampirism (the trait) doesn’t heal enough to be effective in pvp. Healing for 28 per hit is nothing compared to the burst in this game. It should be made to scale somehow, preferably with +heal, so vamp bunker necros become a viable spec. To get +heal, you have to sacrifice both offense and defense, so I feel this is fair

Life Siphon does okay damage as the vid above demonstrates, but most of the time it’s better to just auto attack. You’ll hit harder with dagger #1, and you don’t have to worry about the channel getting interrupted (which happens all the time against real players)

Rangers have a similar problem with their short bow. You COULD use buttons 2-5, but most of the time it’s better to just auto attack

edit: Most of the traits in Blood Magic are underwhelming. They could all use a buff. I would rather play a lifesteal dagger necro than a power/crit necro but currently I cannot because it’s not worth it to take a significant drop in DPS for very mediocre healing returns

When you straight list all the siphon abilities, without numbers, you think WOW. Then you look at the numbers and many become very much “MEH”. Then you take out the bugged ones and try and build a playable siphon build…..hmmmmm. Then you look at a condition build..at least one of them is viable atm.

Reduce cooldown of siphon to 10s. Reduce channeling duration to 2 seconds.

Move Vampiric(Life on hit) to the 5-point trait. Make Vampiric Precision(Life on crit) the 15-point trait. Make these things scale a bit better.

Move the XIth trait to the Minion tree and add a trait which makes Life Siphon more like Life Transfer. Make it hit additional targets but reduce the healing by 40% and add Life Force gain to it.

This would make for one hell of a tanky beast. Perhaps even overpowered but I feel like the Necro(specifically daggers) need quite a bit of help.

The life siphon is too weak if you are looking at it from the perspective of being a dedicated life leeching spec, which is what I wanted to play from the start. it’s wholefully non-viable as a playstyle and I have given up, I see the life siphon as just a side bonus to dagger, in which case it’s about what I’d expect

shenhua.2186:

Reduce cooldown of siphon to 10s. Reduce channeling duration to 2 seconds.

Move Vampiric(Life on hit) to the 5-point trait. Make Vampiric Precision(Life on crit) the 15-point trait. Make these things scale a bit better.

Move the XIth trait to the Minion tree and add a trait which makes Life Siphon more like Life Transfer. Make it hit additional targets but reduce the healing by 40% and add Life Force gain to it.

This would make for one hell of a tanky beast. Perhaps even overpowered but I feel like the Necro(specifically daggers) need quite a bit of help.

I would love this, also GIVE US SCALING WITH +HEALING, WHY DO YOU MAKE US HATE +HEALING!?

I think if you go for a life leeching spec, it would make sense to also use sigils, runes and
food to gain additional life leech.

What you have access to assuming a 50% critical hit chance:

Vampiric: 38 per hit
Vampiric Precision : 155 on critical hit (average 78 per hit)
Superior Sigil of Blood: 30% chance to steal 450 health on critical (average 67 per hit)
Omnomberry Pie: 66% Chance to steal 300 health on critical (average 100 per hit)

That adds up to 250+ health/damage per hit. Much like conditions, toughness doesn’t
seem to effect the damage on the enemy.

Now you’d want to generate a lot of hits on the enemy.
Dagger is great for that with the fast skill 1 combo and the skill 2 channel that
generates 3 hits per second and even steals life on its own already.
Axe/Focus does well too, with skill 2 hitting 4 times per second, skill 1 still feels a bit
lackluster, but at least hits twice.
Both weapons are also good when it comes to life force generation.

There are some other life leech effects you can take advantage of:

Sigil of Superior Leeching: 975 on next attack after weapon swap
Superior Rune of Vampirism(2): 5% chance to steal life on next hit after being hit
Superior Rune of Vampirism(4): 975 on next attack after using your healing skill

If you combine all these effects, you can recover 4-5k life using Siphon Life followed by
Ghastly Claws and also cause that as extra damage. If you add what you’d recover
from Siphon Life anyway, you end up at 6-7k.

If you also take well utilities with Vampiric Rituals and have good toughness, power
and some vitality on your gear on top of the precision you need, then you can last
long, still do a decent amount of damage and support your group.

I find myself wondering if a game should be tuned for the extreme limits (stacking everything one can get ones hands on towards a single goal) or something a bit more laid back where you do not stack to the same extreme but at least get a survivable result.

Then again most games seems to walk into the trap of linear increases, meaning that what works for a laid back scenario blows up spectacularly when the numbers gets heavily stacked. This because it is easier to calculate than some kind of diminishing return system where beyond some point the cost of stacking on more heavily outweighs the benefits gained.

The life leeching mechanic is a part of what makes this class an attrition class (well, JP said that its design philosophy is to be an attrition class type).

Considering that most regular attacks hit somewhere for between 800-1000 those 28 points I get back per hit (if I spent traits) really realy reeaaaally will save me – especially when I take the real hard hitting stuff into account.

Asmodean.5820:

The life leeching mechanic is a part of what makes this class an attrition class (well, JP said that its design philosophy is to be an attrition class type).

Considering that most regular attacks hit somewhere for between 800-1000 those 28 points I get back per hit (if I spent traits) really realy reeaaaally will save me – especially when I take the real hard hitting stuff into account.

I didn’t understand what you said.
Did you mean that average enemy attacks hit for 800-1000? Because if you meant that, I think we aren’t playing the same game.

sorrow.2364:

Asmodean.5820:

The life leeching mechanic is a part of what makes this class an attrition class (well, JP said that its design philosophy is to be an attrition class type).

Considering that most regular attacks hit somewhere for between 800-1000 those 28 points I get back per hit (if I spent traits) really realy reeaaaally will save me – especially when I take the real hard hitting stuff into account.

I didn’t understand what you said.
Did you mean that average enemy attacks hit for 800-1000? Because if you meant that, I think we aren’t playing the same game.

Most opponents really do hit for at least 800-1000 per hit normally, on top of that, bursts from mez/thief are REALLY killing right now, so being able to regen 4k~ only from chaining abilities is NOT viable. Especially since Life Siphon is SUPER interruptable, its like raising your arm to let someone gut punch you. Once you hit Dagger2, you might as well say “I give up” and let them chain everything they have on you.

In return, channels counter dodges very well. No matter how you time it, you can’t evade life siphon completely with a single dodge.

And what do you expect? 10k Damage healed with an ability chain that is on a 8/12 second cooldown? With Abilities that also grant great life force regeneration?

Even a single Dagger1 Combo can heal you for 800-1000. Everything you do that does direct damage triggers life leech, not just the channels.

Dagger1, Axe2 and Focus4 are also great for gaining life force.

Maybe burst of other classes is the main problem here in PvP?
In PvE you might end up making us nigh unkillable.

Dulon.9347:

In return, channels counter dodges very well. No matter how you time it, you can’t evade life siphon completely with a single dodge.

And what do you expect? 10k Damage healed with an ability chain that is on a 8/12 second cooldown? With Abilities that also grant great life force regeneration?

Even a single Dagger1 Combo can heal you for 800-1000. Everything you do that does direct damage triggers life leech, not just the channels.

Dagger1, Axe2 and Focus4 are also great for gaining life force.

Maybe burst of other classes is the main problem here in PvP?
In PvE you might end up making us nigh unkillable.

So, how does one dagger autoattack cycle ever heal you so much? I mean.. if you have 100% crit it would heal according to you for (38 + 155) * 4 which is 772 which is VERY nice. But then we have to factor in REALITY and then we realize that 100% crit is not possible and we’ll be looking at very different numbers.

If I remember correctly from playing my Thief last night just by using my Signet of (Passive Healing!?) that heals every hit for 115 with the spec I currently use. If we factor in a realistic high crit value of about 60% it would let us heal for 524 on average each time we use the dagger auto chain whereas the Thief using ONLY his Signet would heal for 460 a mere 64 points of healing less than we would if we had spent 20 points improving our such heals.

The reason I don’t include any Sigils or Food is because any class can get access to those.

I would love to see the channel duration of Life Siphon reduced and the cooldown aswell because you almost NEVER get to see a full Life Siphon complete in PvP and in PvE it most likely won’t even help a tiny bit against anything relatively dangerous due to how long it is.

As far as i know, the thief signet heals on hit. So it doesn’t do any damage.
That’s a difference you need to take into account too.

I can’t vouch for the viability of a Life Siphon Necro in PvP because i don’t do enough
of it. But in PvE Dungeons it works very well for me.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRAoY3djQah6daWa87JAJFNj90Du9W8IFFfMA;TkAKnMOJcy6k0pFGDM2hMDB

That’s the skill setup i use.

I only get positive feedback ingame and it works well enough that people i partied
with seek me out again to join their group. Some even started Necromancer and
asked me how i do what i do dungeons. So at least something must be right.

It just seems a lot of people just theorycraft instead of trying it ingame with proper
skills, traits, stats and food.

I am using no Staff and favor Axe over it. I use Dark Armor. I use Bloodthirst and
Vampiric Precision. According to the general opinion on the forums i should be weak
beyond compare.

I just don’t see that effect while playing.

Let me guess, drop the wells and chain-channel in tight circles to keep the mobs on them? Sure, it can work. But it is about the only time it does work and require that you pile on the traits and skills. Skills that on the utility side have a minute of cooldown each.

At the start of a fight, i run in and use Well of Darkness and Well of Suffering.
There’s hardly a reason to move at that point.

I save Well of Blood for emergencies or when a party member nearby needs some
health. Well of Power is used in a similar way.

I actually dropped Focused Rituals because i am near the enemy anyway and dropped
Ritual Mastery because Ritual of Blood is ready when i need it even without the
cooldown reduction.

I rarely have to pull back out of melee range, even with wells on cooldown.
It’s not like i only have 10 seconds of viability and then everything is on cooldown for 1 minute.

The wells are there since they support what i do, but they are not the sole reason that
lets me survive.

And during all this the mobs focus on you?

I can’t guarantee that enemies stay on me all the time.
But often enough, they do.

And if they decide to chase/attack someone else i have a root, chill effects, cripple,
fear and wells to help them survive.

I think it’s a balanced mix between damage, survival, support and control effects.
Although it favors the survival aspect a bit.

While i have not gone as deep into vampirism as your build has (no runes for one thing), my experience is that i can barely survive having 3 PVE mobs on me, never mind dungeon mobs. Any more and i am as likely to face the sky as walk away.

This even with wells and whatsnot siphoning health and liberal use of DS for both dealing and absorbing damage.

If they ever decide to scale siphon skills with healing power, we’ll see much better viability in pve and spvp, with the weakness then being getting rid of poison.

tl;dr if we scale with healing power, we’ll have to focus on keeping poison off our characters, a good tradeoff. Some people are worried about siphon builds becoming OP if they scale with healing power, but in reality, we’ll just see more people trying to apply poison— a much underrated condition in the game currently imo.

People keep looking at all the skills available to the necro, and there are a lot of good ones. But that’s the problem with a lot of the necro skills and traits. When you list them, people tend to look at the extreme of the capabilities of each and at that extreme, many of the skills are potent.

But to put them into a viable build, you cannot reach these extremes most of the time, the skills quickly are dulled by not being able to match all the prerequisites for the extreme results. Most necro builds are a poor compromise, maybe one specific skill blended with a heap of mediocre partially “implemented” skills and traits that can’t reach their full or even sometime usable potential.

This is what we miss…the synergy of our skills so they complement each other better rather than be an either/or choice into mediocrity.

if necromancers are supposed to be the best vampire why the heck dont they sparkle in the daytime

Only when set on fire…