Guild Wars 2

Problem:

Life siphoning in its present form is considered insufficient for providing the attrition and sustain which are, ostensibly, the hallmarks of the necromancer profession in general and certain variants of blood necromancer in particular. This isn’t merely opinion, but rather has been demonstrated by the player base and even the devs themselves who’ve remarked on how lackluster life siphoning is.

There are many reasons for this state of affairs. I believe one of the most fundamental is the devs’ fear that life siphoning which scales proportionately to the amount of damage the necromancer receives, how many foes the necromancer faces, or otherwise provides sufficient attrition and sustain for the classic vampiric necro will push minion master necros who trait into life siphoning into the ungodly realm.

If true, this is a legitimate fear. However, it is also holding blood necromancy back from being the truly rewarding, viable, and yet balanced option for players who enjoy it.

Solutions:

1) Do nothing. Blood necromancy remains a sub-optimal build played by a vanishingly small minority of the player population. They play it out of nostalgia for their GW1 days or are otherwise drawn to the thematic style of the blood necromancer; at the expense of in-game viability.

2) Make near-insignificant changes to the life siphoning numbers while touting them as “improvements”. This is even worse than doing nothing as it creates a situation of shattered hopes and unmet expectations for those players drawn to blood necromancy. Even if true improvements are in the works, the pace of their role-out is so slow and the results to date so disappointing that the frustration and lost faith this engenders in the blood necromancer population will do more harm than the improvements will do good over the long term.

3) Add a new trait and change existing traits which permit additional life siphoning for the necro but not from minions. This has the effect of allowing the classic vampire to emerge as a viable build in GW2 without overpowering the minion master who chooses to rely on life siphoning for their sustain, as well. It is this solution I will now discuss in detail.

Details and Discussion:

1) Blood to Power (Blood Magic Minor Grandmaster trait).

This trait is useless. It’s rare to remain above 90% health in a protracted fight; protracted fights being what an attrition and sustain class is supposed to excel at and even attempt to create to leverage their strengths over time.

Thematically it doesn’t fit, either. Our adept and master minor traits fit the blood theme; gain regeneration when health drops below a threshold and siphon health when hitting a foe, respectively. But more power in our healing and vitality line? It just doesn’t fit the theme.

Here is what I suggest changing it to:

Blood Reaper (working name; suggest a different one if you like)
Gain 10% of Life Force generation as healing. Does not function while in Death Shroud (to preserve the current prohibition against DS healing).

The way this works is let’s assume a Life Force pool of 18,000. Something dies near the necromancer and they gain 10% of their Life Force from that death; 1,800 Life Force in this case. The necro who has invested 25 points into the Blood Magic line would also be healed for 10% of that amount; 180 health. Additionally, the same necromancer wielding a dagger gains 6% Life Force with Necrotic Bite; 1,080 Life Force in this case. They would then be healed for 10% of this amount, too; 108 health. Finally, this necromancer casts Spectral Grasp and gains 15% Life Force; 2,700 Life Force. They would be healed for 270 health.

None of these healing amounts are astronomical. Instead, they’re a low but sustained trickle of health as befitting the kind of healing to which blood necros have access. Also note this is just straight healing based on Life Force; there will be no scaling with healing power and it is unaffected by Bloodthirst, Vampiric, et al. Indirectly, however, increasing vitality will improve the healing generated from this trait; so a nod is given to diversifying stats.

Furthermore, it remains consistent with the lore and design philosophy of the necromancer being an adherent of the aggression school of magic. This new source of healing results from the death of enemies in the necro’s vicinity as well as the necros aggressive use of their skills to press the offensive. This trait won’t be nearly as effective for the necro standing in the backline and sniping away at targets as it will be for an in-your-face necro feverishly slashing away at enemies.

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To further reinforce the notion that necros should always be on the offense to benefit from their version of sustain, encourage more frequent use of Death Shroud, and to throw a bone to those who fear this could become overpowered, limit it (if you must) so the necro whose Life Force pool is full will not benefit from this trait. Only when the Life Force pool is less than 100% and the necro can absorb those little green spheres will the healing from this trait kick in.

Lastly, it’s an agnostic trait. It’s not restricted to purely life siphoning builds. Necros traiting to be a support healer, a minion master, a well-o-mancer, a spectralist, etc. can all benefit from this trait. It supports build diversity in addition to sustain.

2) Bloodthirst

Leave it at the nerfed 20% improvement to life siphoning which followed the October 15th, 2013 patch (down from 50%). However, it now applies to ALL life siphoning, including the dagger #2 Life Siphon skill, the healing from Signet of the Locust, life siphoning food buffs, life siphoning runes, and life siphoning sigils.

Anyone can equip a sigil or eat an Omnomberry Ghost and benefit from life siphoning on crit. Blood necromancers, though, should be the undisputed masters of life siphoning; it’s what they do, it’s their role, their niche. Thus, Bloodthirst would apply to these forms of life siphoning, as well.

3) Quickening Thirst

I personally know of no one who equips this trait. I imagine someone out there has a very niche build where they find some use for it. I would hazard a guess it’s an extremely tiny number of players, though. It’s a waste of space. Either merge it with Dagger Mastery and have Dagger Mastery swap places with another trait (Deathly Invigoration, perhaps) to become a master trait or dump Quickening Thirst…quickly.

Though Quickening Thirst is unrelated to attrition, life siphoning, and sustain, it’s included in this discussion because getting rid of it opens a slot for a new trait which will impact those aspects of the Blood Line.

4) Vampiric Master

The October 15th patch nerfed this trait by decreasing the base siphoning by 16%. Rather than a straight reversion which returns the life siphoning to its higher but still static amount, I suggest the following change instead:

For each minion summoned, the healing from life siphoning is improved 5%. The damage portion will not scale in the same fashion, though it will continue to scale with power. A full minion master utility bar (not including Jagged Horrors from the Reanimator trait) would net an additional 30% life siphoning above base if all minions are summoned at the same time. While they remain alive, Jagged Horrors would increase this even further.

Let’s assume the pre-nerf life siphoning value was 79 per hit. Decreasing this by 16% equals 66 life siphoned per hit post-nerf. With this suggested change, if there are six minions summoned, 66 per hit would increase to 86; an 8% increase over the pre-nerf value of 79. This, in turn, increases to 103 per hit if traiting Bloodthirst (20% version).

This allows for scaling of the life siphoning coming from the minions, making minion mastery a more viable build through improved sustain; provided the necro skillfully manages his or her minions (skill being what it should all be about, anyway).

5) Vampiric Precision

This trait comes at a high opportunity cost of building deep into precision; sacrificing healing power and vitality in the process. This for a trait which is meant to support our attrition and sustain; completely counter-intuitive and counter-productive. On further reflection, perhaps it does fit the lore of the aggression school of magic. Necro healing doesn’t come from healing; it comes from ripping the life out of others. Fair enough.

Either way, it is what it is and I’m trying to avoid suggesting radical overhauls to any one skill or trait. With these factors in mind, here are some suggestions for improving the life siphoning from this skill (only one of the following; not all three):

a) Increase the base life siphoning to what it was prior to the October 15th, 2013 patch if a necro traited Vampiric Precision + Bloodthirst. This would make the new base siphoning on crit = 51.

b) Every Xth critical hit, Vampiric Precision siphons double the amount. This could be every 3rd hit, every 5th hit, etc.

c) Vampiric Precision will life siphon at its current rate (40 per hit without traiting Bloodthirst). A new icon tied to Vampiric Precision will display above the necro’s utility bar. With each critical hit, a stack is added to the icon. At 10 stacks, the next crit the necro performs heals for ten times the base life siphoning of Vampiric Precision (a 400 point heal; 510 with Bloodthirst).

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The stacks are then reset to zero and must build back up to 10 before receiving another 10x heal. If the necro leaves combat mode, the stacks begin to degenerate at the rate of 1 stack per X seconds (perhaps lose 1 stack second). This reinforces the concept of the necro having to remain on the offensive if they wish to benefit the most from this trait.

6) Vampiric Rituals

I don’t feel this is worthy of being a grandmaster trait. The amount of life siphoning is barely any greater than what is achieved with the Vampiric minor master trait. Furthermore, it’s effectiveness – such as it is – is negated by an enemy simply blinking, dodging, leaping, teleporting, or walking out of the well. Maybe it makes short work of AI mobs in PvE; but then so does everything else. Therefore, I vote for it being demoted to a master trait. With the spot vacated by Quickening Thirst (as suggested in point #3 above), there’s now room for Vampiric Rituals to move down a tier.

7) Blood Mastery, Blood Rage, Blood Storm (take your pick or suggest your own title)

A new major grandmaster trait for the Blood Magic line.

This skill will scale life siphoning based on the number of enemies within a certain range (900 range is my initial thought). These numbers would have to come from testing and balancing. Just as brainstorming ideas, here are a few suggestions:

a) All life siphoning except for Vampiric Master is improved 20% for each opponent within range up to a maximum of 100% (5 opponents). This allows the extra life siphoning to ramp up quickly but also cap out just as quickly. This aids in PvE and smaller PvP encounters.

b) All life siphoning except for Vampiric Master is improved 15% for each opponent within range up to a maximum of 150% (10 opponents). This slows the ramp up compared to option (a) but allows for a higher cap. This is the middle-of-the-road “balanced” compromise.

c) All life siphoning except for Vampiric Master is improved 10% for each opponent within range up to a maximum of 200% (20 opponents). This is the slowest ramp up but the highest cap. We’re arguably pretty strong in 1v1, so giving us too fast a ramp up would make us OP in such fights. This option addresses that concern.

However, we’re at a serious disadvantage as the numbers of opponents scale up. By having a larger cap, this option gives us more potential sustain than options (a) and (b). This option also fits best with the lore; we’re supposed to get stronger and stronger the more and more violence and aggression we’re surrounded by.

This trait would stack with Bloodthirst. For example, Vampiric Precision currently siphons 40 health at base and 51 when traiting Bloodthirst. Adding this trait, facing one opponent, and choosing option ( c) would increase that to 51 * 1.10 = 56.

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Closing Remarks:

At first it appears this new trait is penalizing minion masters. That’s not the intent. As stated at the beginning, the goal is to make life siphoning builds in general more viable without crossing the line into making minion master siphoners unkillable; which is – in my opinion – one of the factors holding blood necromancy back at the moment. This new trait, in conjunction with the other suggestions, allows for the classic blood necro to improve sustain without pushing the minion master into the OP realm.

A minion master necro traiting into the Blood Magic line will have to make choices which are mutually exclusive. Assuming 30 points spent: trait Bloodthirst, Vampiric Precision, and Vampiric Master or Bloodthirst, Blood Mastery, and Vampiric Master?

With Blood Mastery’s restriction of not applying to minions, the minion master doesn’t get to “double dip” and raise his or her minions’ life siphoning to insane levels. Even so, with the suggested changes to Vampiric Mastery, the minion master’s sustain still sees some improvement; as long as the minions are skillfully juggled. The minion master themself can still do some decent focused life siphoning if they opt for Vampiric Precision.

By contrast, the classic vampire can go full throttle by traiting Bloodthirst, Vampiric Precision, and Blood Mastery. Their individual hit-for-hit life siphons will be greater than the minions master’s, but at the cost of fewer sources. The minion master broadly disseminates their source of life siphoning among multiple minions. The vampire’s siphoning is constrained by their attacks alone being their only source of life siphoning; albeit with potentially greater scaling compared to the minion master.

Then we must consider, too, how effective would Vampiric Precision be for a minion master. Would they build deep into precision to take advantage of this trait at the expense of other stats? Would they invest 30 points into Blood Magic to gain access to both Vampiric Mastery and Vampiric Precision if doing so meant sacrificing desirable traits in other lines?

What’s more is, minion masters can already do this if they choose and yet it’s not proven game breaking or OP. Adding the new Blood Mastery trait forces a mutually exclusive decision; trait Blood Mastery or Vampiric Precision. They get to life siphon via their minions and then either siphon on crit or improve their non-minion siphons by a scaling amount; but not both. The vampire, by contrast, can trait for both; but doesn’t get to have an army of minions as yet another source of life siphoning.

Improving life siphoning is not the only factor in improving the necromancer’s attrition and sustain; it’s just one piece of the puzzle. However, I’ve attempted to limit this suggestion to just the Blood Magic line for the time being. I’ve tried, as well, to keep the changes consistent with what the devs have said is and isn’t allowed for necros (e.g. no healing in Death Shroud) while seeking to maintain balance between the various traits and the builds which could result from them.

Thank you for reading.

The problem with all non-minion siphoning is that as it can have massive “potential” scaling, it has to suck otherwise, to keep it from being OP in those situations. As long as this remains, it will always remain subpar or OP, and won’t be satisfying for all build types. Minion skills on the other hand feel great

Look at what they did to Spectral Armor: removed its really high scaling situation via ICD, and then buffed its per-hit effect, and made it our single best defensive skill. All they’d have to do is allow the traits to siphon from up to 5 people for each ICD section (instead of hitting 1 guy with a dagger and setting the trait on ICD right before Locust Swarm ticks for a 5 person siphon); and even then the minion skills do really well in team situations still, so I’m not sure even that would be necessary.

Very nice work!
Every patch they fix our attrition by making us die faster, but with more damage dose make me ‘lost faith’. Especially with what feels to me, as unfair and dirty damage. (More condi’s than can be cleansed, minions damage with siphon that scales minions & ignores armor/mitigation)

I’d personally like to see, our siphons keep up with other class’s life on hit.

Ele Sig of Resto – 202 per hit with a healing power scaling of 0.1

Vamp – 25.5 per hit with a healing power of 0.004

What I’d really love to see, is it be stronger with more trait cost. (Giving up other things to build it in) Allow it to heal others. (Higher/burst-yer in AoE damage situations than other class’s passives, but less help when things are quiet)

The other thing I dream of. Is more ‘on a knife edge’ play. Long CD, big heal that heals us more then lower our life. So we could get beat down to 1 more hit kills us, then if we pull of skilled play, have a ‘were fine’ if we get it right, ‘were dead’ if we get it wrong.

I’m just about to the point where I think they should just scrap the siphoning traits and start over with something entirely different.

They are obviously petrified to do more than tweak them in tiny increments which really doesn’t do anything to make them viable or interesting. Which is kind of funny since there have been multiple truly OP devastating sustain builds from other classes, including warrior right now, that they have let go live with no problems.

I used to love using a siphon build back in guild wars 1. I’ve been playing around with siphons a little bit lately and what I miss most is having actual skills that siphon from the target.

Sure there are a couple of skills mixed here and there but what I wish I had was a Blood weapon.

Those are interesting sugestions, but I have a problem with the things said about lifedrain effects been bad.

They might sound weak in general but they do work great in combination with our Axe and Dagger skills. I personnaly play a Dagger/Focus (switch with Axe) 30/0/0/30/10 and you can run around with a full Berserker Build and have heavy sustain just with your lifedrain skills. Bloodmagic focus around wells and daggers a lot, while those are clearly not the best options for Pvp they do work great for PvE and the sustain from our grandmaster in conjuncture with the minor traits make it pretty strong.

Just take the following exemple, I use a full berserker geared necro’s Well of Suffering with Vampiric Rituals, Bloodthirst and Vampiric. You get 92hps/target this is 460hps if you can hit up to 5 targets alone, and this without including the other wells you can stack on top of it and the lifedrain from your dagger wich triggers, with each of its blows, the Vampiric trait and the high passive amount of healing power you get from traits.

When I play my Blood Necro I rarely stay low on health after taking a heavy blow, so in my honest oppinion life drain effects are working as intended.

1) Blood to Power ISN’T useless. The whole pve meta circulate around los trashes and bosses’ OHKO mechanics, thus it is quite possible to maintain a high health. In fact, the most suggested rune to go with zerker gear is scholar rune.

It doesn’t fit the blood line I agree, because, imho, the blood line is about gaining health in a non-full-hp situation. If the hp is already full, it doesn’t make much sense to suck more health from foes. I think it should swap with Siphoned Power with some modification.

Blood Reaper you suggested sounds like GW1’s SR, which I think belongs more in death’s line or SR line. It is not from a balance POV but more of a lore POV.

2) Bloodthirst I like your suggestion. We need more of these little trait that makes us want to invest in, even for builds that’s not using that line as core.

3) Quickening Thirst yeah, do something to that crap.

4) Vampiric Master Good point.

5) Vampiric Precision I think this has the potential to upgrade as master trait, costing more. Reason is currently being adept trait you don’t have to invest too much into the line but still benefit the full effect from prec. Moving to master and increasing siphon will encourage people to invest deeper into the line.

6) Vampiric Rituals Agree

7) Die hard lol, w/e. We need something that powerful like the ones you suggested in the GM trait really.

Afya.5842:

1) Blood to Power ISN’T useless. The whole pve meta circulate around los trashes and bosses’ OHKO mechanics, thus it is quite possible to maintain a high health. In fact, the most suggested rune to go with zerker gear is scholar rune.

Blood to power is only 90 power when you are over 90% HP. That 90 power doesn’t go a long way. It is better than siphoned power to be sure, but compared to curses 25, I wouldn’t write home about it.

In fact other than curses 25…. all our 25 point traits are pretty minor in how they impact a build or playstyle

Rennoko.5731:

Afya.5842:

1) Blood to Power ISN’T useless. The whole pve meta circulate around los trashes and bosses’ OHKO mechanics, thus it is quite possible to maintain a high health. In fact, the most suggested rune to go with zerker gear is scholar rune.

Blood to power is only 90 power when you are over 90% HP. That 90 power doesn’t go a long way. It is better than siphoned power to be sure, but compared to curses 25, I wouldn’t write home about it.

In fact other than curses 25…. all our 25 point traits are pretty minor in how they impact a build or playstyle

Amplitude wise I agree. But I just don’t think it is necessary to be completely overhauled.

If it can’t be balanced, remove it and replace with something that can be balanced.

I don’t see why small siphon even in deathshroud is a problem either.

Every class gets siphon equal to the whole blood magic line just from food. Meanwhile:

1. Necromancer’s have daggers or really slow weapons
2. Life siphon does nothing against the weaknesses of the class, CC and spike damage
3. Necromancer’s have high HP and shroud but heal skills are on long cooldowns
4. Necromancer’s have no fury as a class so on-crit siphons require big investment in precision

All improvements to life siphoning would do is buy the class time in long fights for cooldown recharges.

Great work there. Life siphoning just sucks at the moment, it´s just completely stupid how Anet doesnt get the problems here at all and how they manage to ignore the permanent stream of imcoming fixing suggestions.

1: Slap an ICD on vampiric and vampiric precision.
2: Let them scale with healing power
3: Done

I really don’t see why it has to be more complicated than that…

Afya.5842:

Blood Reaper you suggested sounds like GW1’s SR, which I think belongs more in death’s line or SR line. It is not from a balance POV but more of a lore POV.

Though I agree it would – from a lore perspective – be more appropriate in the Soul Reaping line, I chose Blood Magic for two reasons:

1) We’re not permitted to heal in Death Shroud. Unless that changes, gaining healing from anything – regardless of source – doesn’t really fit in the Soul Reaping line.

2) The Blood Magic line is concerned with our healing, life siphoning, and sustain. Thus a trait which involves healing is most appropriate in this line.

As a nod to the fact that the trait – as suggested – works off of Life Force, I chose to recognize that with the name. Blood Magic + Soul Reaping = Blood Reaper.

Its the old problem all over again…the base abilities are nerfed/kept at very low levels just to avoid the rarer outlier OP chances as Bhawb indicated above. This approach will always end with lack luster abilities and results in the player base adopting the "cookie cutter’ builds to utilise the OP outcome just to rfemain competitive because this is what we are balanced on….and this has been the problem with a lot of our skills so far.

Ambrecombe.4398:

Those are interesting sugestions, but I have a problem with the things said about lifedrain effects been bad.

They might sound weak in general but they do work great in combination with our Axe and Dagger skills. I personnaly play a Dagger/Focus (switch with Axe) 30/0/0/30/10 and you can run around with a full Berserker Build and have heavy sustain just with your lifedrain skills. Bloodmagic focus around wells and daggers a lot, while those are clearly not the best options for Pvp they do work great for PvE and the sustain from our grandmaster in conjuncture with the minor traits make it pretty strong.

Just take the following exemple, I use a full berserker geared necro’s Well of Suffering with Vampiric Rituals, Bloodthirst and Vampiric. You get 92hps/target this is 460hps if you can hit up to 5 targets alone, and this without including the other wells you can stack on top of it and the lifedrain from your dagger wich triggers, with each of its blows, the Vampiric trait and the high passive amount of healing power you get from traits.

When I play my Blood Necro I rarely stay low on health after taking a heavy blow, so in my honest oppinion life drain effects are working as intended.

It’s perhaps a case of my bias showing. I’ve done the same; worked through all of PvE, personal story, dungeons, world bosses, and fractals with a life siphoning build. Not because life siphoning builds are OP but because PvE content is easy.

My unspoken focus is more on the PvP/WvWvW side where life siphoning falls short; most especially in its lack of ability to scale relative to the increasing numbers of opponents we face in those arenas. From a lore perspective, we’re supposed to get stronger the more death, destruction, and violence surrounds us. However, that is far from the case in practice. From a balance and viability standpoint, life siphoning is lackluster and has been admitted as such by the devs themselves.

I have a question, what would be the ideal vampric sustain trait allocation that you want.

0/0/30/30/0? 0/0/0/30/30? 0/0/20/30/20?

I was thinking that there is no need to stuff all life steal traits into blood magic. Put some life steal traits into somewhere else.

I am also thinking, maybe that there is too few life-steal skills. There should be traits that lets us life-steal through other means.

Spite traitline could have a trait that lets us steal life through signets.
Curse traitline could have a trait that lets us steal life through Corruption.
Minions already lifesteal.
Wells already lifesteal.
Spectral skill gives lifesteal in a trait in Soul reaping tree.

Amazing thread. My name is Sheobix, and I approve this message.

I’ve been working this Vamp Spec on my Necro.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQUQRBIbdG2IkW1enmlGDniQqA2me4txJOIFuHXUFgHA-jAyA4tBRTRCNhJQpxioxWiLiGrqBTrSEV7PKiWtUA6JMC-e

I haven’t tried it in sPvP yet, but it works quite well in WvW, and wonderfully in PvE/Dungeons.

Weapons. Mainset. MH I went with Dagger for obvious reasons with the Blood sigil – again, obvious. OH I went with the Focus for the vulnerability and regen, as well as the chill, once I have them I don’t want them easily getting away or enjoying any boons that might save them or hurt me (enhanced with Chill of Death). OH Sigil You can go Perception (Yay Crit) or Leeching if you’re someone who switches weapons more than the “average bear”.

Offset I went with Axe for a ranged option as well as the vulnerability and the multi attack of Ghastly Claws for leeching. again, Blood Sigil. OH I went with the Warhorn because if I run out of wells or want the enemy at a distance daze, cripple and swiftness are my best friends – plus the leaching from locusts is handy. Again, Perception or Leeching are your choices for Sigil.

Heal. Well of Blood – I may as well increase my heals and get leeching as well as the regular well pulses (thanks to Vampiric Rituals). (Ritual of Protection also gives me Protection for all of my wells, and Ritual Mastery reduces my Well CD’s)

Utility 1. Spectral Grasp. Nice interrupt ability and it gets them into my wells. (Shorten CD with Spectral Mastery)

Utility 2&3 Well of Power & Well of Suffering. I may switch out either well with Well of Darkness for PvE if there are other professions stacking vulnerability or throwing stability and there are no real conditions going out, the blind’s help me get hit less. For WvW I want as much damage going out on my target as I can, and I don’t want to be feared or get stacked with conditions, so these two are great.

Big AoE mobs I may drop all 3 wells at once and just go swinging away with the dagger, and they go down like ice on a griddle and my health doesn’t budge.

Single Target I take my time, dropping a well at a time as I need them to keep sustained damage/leeching.

I didn’t choose any traits that incorporate Death Shroud because I rarely use it. I have plenty of AoE that serves dual purpose, I don’t have to deal high amounts of burst damage because I have survival longevity and I do a decent amount of sustainable damage… Death Shroud is basically an “OH CRAP!” button or an “I need to get just a little bit further away from this boss” button.

Elite. To me Elites are a personal choice. I like Lich, but some of you might like Plague, it’s really just personal preference with this build.

For gear I went with Precision/Vitality/Healing Power, with the Sanctuary Runes. Precision because of Vampiric Percision. A nice big health pool is always good. Almost 30k (eat your heart out Warriors) is nice. The heal on Vampiric Precision scales with healing power (as does the Blood Sigil I believe), and a 50% crit chance without Perception stacks is nothing to shake a stick at.
I went with the Sanctuary Runes because 1. More health is always useful against either NPC or Player. 2. 20% longer chill times for my Spinal Shivers when I use it and when it procs with Chill of Death is nice. 3. 25% chance for damage to be reflected back to it’s source? Yes Please! 4. So when I’m at 20% health I can’t be stunned, crippled, chilled or in any other way incapacitated? SWEET!
I was running the Vamp runes for a while, but a 5% chance when struck is pretty wimpy to me. The mist form at 10% health did come in handy in WvW though, it bought some time for CD’s.
I looked onto the Mesmer Runes because the precision is nice, and 33% longer daze on my WH seems like a good deal… but, I only go ranged when a.) I run out of wells or b.) the fight/situation calls for it, I TRY to stay Mainset to maximize my leeching, so a benefit to my offset seems wasteful.

The only talent switch out I make in WvW is SOMETIMES I’ll switch out Spectral Mastery for Fear of Death. Otherwise the gear and the setup work great for both PvE and WvW without changing a thing.

Hope this helps inspire some new vamps, or rekindle some old ones :-)

Ambrecombe.4398:

Those are interesting sugestions, but I have a problem with the things said about lifedrain effects been bad.

They might sound weak in general but they do work great in combination with our Axe and Dagger skills. I personnaly play a Dagger/Focus (switch with Axe) 30/0/0/30/10 and you can run around with a full Berserker Build and have heavy sustain just with your lifedrain skills. Bloodmagic focus around wells and daggers a lot, while those are clearly not the best options for Pvp they do work great for PvE and the sustain from our grandmaster in conjuncture with the minor traits make it pretty strong.

Just take the following exemple, I use a full berserker geared necro’s Well of Suffering with Vampiric Rituals, Bloodthirst and Vampiric. You get 92hps/target this is 460hps if you can hit up to 5 targets alone, and this without including the other wells you can stack on top of it and the lifedrain from your dagger wich triggers, with each of its blows, the Vampiric trait and the high passive amount of healing power you get from traits.

When I play my Blood Necro I rarely stay low on health after taking a heavy blow, so in my honest oppinion life drain effects are working as intended.

yes in a pve situation maybe, in pvp or wvw people just leave the well.

There is only one comment on this topic that I would like to make, concerning the wells. With a high amount of healing power, necromancers can already heal for almost 600 per second for 10 seconds plus the initial heal of around 6000 with the healing well, meaning they can get a ton of health that way; if life siphoning is increased, it could make the healing line somewhat over-powered. The solution to this might be to make an incentive for well-users to invest their traits in another line, such as putting the -20% recharge trait in the toughness line. Otherwise, you would have necromancers healing a ton in some other way besides the blood fiend.
Also, as already said before, they need to get rid of vampiric rituals.

I would point out that a Necromancer with life siphon traits and life siphon food is not OP.

This suggests to me that if life siphoning were increased to a level that equals where life siphon + food is at right now, then that would not be OP.

A few little remarks, a lot of sigils and runes didnt work with Bloodthirst even before the patch, the few that did were technically bugs.
Why not just Power to Blood for the rename (simple and true, also less work for the devs).
Last but not least, instead of scaling up siphons based on enemies around you, why not allow everyone in the party to siphon off and for you? Like all allies in 600 range proc vampiric for you and the amount you are healed off siphons all allies in 600 range get healed too.

I’m currently rolling a siphoning necromancer since anet decided to buff it. It’s not that the buffs are sufficient, but anet admitted that there is something wrong so I enjoy playing these builds as they get buffed up like my meditation guardian.

I personally would hope that they would instead buff the siphoning on hit and crit further and instead offer us some other useful sustaining ability in the blood to power slot. As nekretaal said, it’ts not op right now (it actually feels pretty good imo) with life siphoning food so it doesn’t need too much changes to be ok. Though the buff they currently have in the works benefits my necro greatly since I focused more on offensive siphoning.

It’s totally unrelated to balance, but I wish there was a more visual representation for siphoning. As it is now, opponents don’t really realize what’s happening till it’s too late (which isn’t exactly a bad thing) nor does it feel like I’m stealing health from them.

It’s kind of sad that life stealing always was sub-par in Guild Wars 1. They could never balance it right. And now they can’t get it right in Guild Wars 2. Is it really that difficult to balance?

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

It’s kind of sad that life stealing always was sub-par in Guild Wars 1. They could never balance it right. And now they can’t get it right in Guild Wars 2. Is it really that difficult to balance?

http://www.wowhead.com/spell=49998/ – its old form which used to heal based on % of damage delt was balanced for pve, but op in pvp, the new form which used to heal based on all damage you took before last casting it was balanced in pvp, but worthless in pve, then they made it plain part of your max hp and everyone was happy and i was kinda playing wow for a patch of pandaria before i quit again because noone i know still plays wow and i got my heartstone key~

As I said in the dec balancing thread:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview-Necromancer/page/4#post3145604

Reduce our active heal with every vampiric trait used, but buff the siphoning and scaling.
In the end it should possible to get 150% of current health per sec as a vampire. why 150%? because you can miss attacks, get blinded, posioned, … probably add a small iCD (0,5-1s), so you cant AoE siphon ad it gets to strong.

I think this would make a viable vampire build worth using these traits.