Guild Wars 2

The following began as a response to a post in this thread. It quickly escalated in size and scope, thus warranting it’s own topic (and a desire to not derail the thread from which it was spawned).

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Torqky.3682:

The problem with vampiric is AOE. They are balancing vampiric around fast hitting attacks that hit multiple times and aoe abilities. These abilities include axe 2, staff auto (pierce), all staff marks and all wells. This makes single target siphons weak because if they upped the scaling then healing from aoe would be too strong. You can potentially tag 90 targets in 7 seconds with wells alone (7 pulses x 5 targets=35, 6 pules x 5 targets =30, 5pulses x 5 targets 25). Throw in all staff marks and a few auto attacks and you can potentially tag around 120 targets in 10 seconds.

The devs could man up and address the scaling problem head on or just claim that this continued band-aid fix is working.

Or, you could realize that the siphoning the necro gets from tagging that many doesn’t even come close to helping him last longer against the incoming damage that those enemies provide. Siphoning is one of the things that actually rewards us for aggressive play, hitting as many things as possible. Given Necromancers embody the school of Aggression, I think that’s fitting.

Necro’s biggest problem defensively is that what we have doesn’t scale beyond one opponent. Siphoning is the only thing we have that actually does. If they increased siphoning to be significant (note I did not say “enough to counter”) against one opponent, it is automatically correct for multiple opponents.

^ This.

Though I can appreciate where the arguments in favor of adding internal cool downs to life siphoning are coming from, the solution offered does not address the fundamental flaws.

Here are the various life siphoning options. I’m not suggesting these are the only ones available; it’s a simply a comparison of current life siphoning, internal cool down life siphoning, and a third hybrid suggestion:

1) Current life siphoning.

Steals life with each hit of direct damage, regardless of source, when traiting Vampiric. The pro argument is it can potentially give a necro a lot of sources of siphoning to aid our sustain. It doesn’t actually work that way in practice; read on.

The con argument is it scales with attack speed and/or the amount of AoE that a necro can put out, thus favoring dagger/warhorn and well users. It can be debated this is balanced because the dagger-wielding necro risks more by getting within melee range. Thus they should be rewarded with more siphoning from their faster attack speed. Regardless, since dagger will always be the fastest attacking weapon, life siphon builds favor dagger wielders; shutting out other necro builds from utilizing life siphoning as a sustain mechanic.

The problem is further compounded by ArenaNet’s balancing of life siphoning under the most idealized of circumstances; a dagger/warhorn necro simultaneously dropping multiple wells, popping Locust Swarm, and slashing away with their dagger for some insane life siphoning. To avoid this becoming OP, ArenaNet dials down the hit-for-hit amount of siphoning to ridiculously low levels.

This is problematic for two reasons. First, in practice, it’s rare to ever achieve that idealized scenario. This is in reference to PvP/WvWvW; PvE mobs are dumb as rocks and will stand in any AoE, be it wells, meteor shower, etc. (this is not exclusive to necros). But because they are so afraid of the OMG-UBER-PWNZER-UNKILLABLE-VAMPIRE-NECROS-SO-OP fringe outlyer scenario (which would never happen in PvP anyway because enemies would just simply…walk out of the wells), per-hit life siphoning is insufficient for providing practical sustain.

Secondly, by balancing around the idealized scenario (which leads to weak per-hit life stealing), siphoning has transformed from a sustain mechanic to a burst mechanic. It’s most optimal use doesn’t come from a small but consistent trickle of self-healing over time (as would befit sustain), but rather from jumping into the middle of a fight to bomb enemies with everything you’ve got for 10 seconds (wells are 5 second duration, but Locust Swarm is 10 seconds) and then getting the hell out of Dodge!

2) Add an internal cool down to life siphoning

This suggestion seeks to correct the problems inherent in the current model by introducing an internal cool down. Life siphoning would process only once per second (per the most frequently suggested quantum of time), regardless of how many hits are being made second to second.

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The argument goes that this would no longer favor a single weapon set (dagger/warhorn) as the most optimal for siphoning. This, in turn, would normalize life stealing, making it a practical option for a broader range of necro builds. Sustain would be viable more globally rather than being limited to niche builds in the Blood Magic line.

The counter-arguments to this proposal are three-fold. First, if we’re reduced to only one siphon per second, then the amount siphoned is going to have to sky rocket far beyond its current level to make it viable. Something on the order of 200 or more life siphoned per-second (on hit, of course) to make it even remotely worth traiting. Given the painfully slow rate at which ArenaNet is “improving” our siphons, it will be a very long time before we see a value that high (if ever).

Secondly, normalizing life siphoning by time would not lead to a broader use of it by necros across different builds. Rather, it would simply shift the life siphoning meta from dagger/warhorn to another weapon set. Think about it. Currently, the only advantage the dagger wielder has over other necro weapon sets is the speed with which they can complete an auto-attack rotation. This allows them to siphon life faster which, in turn, is balanced by their greater risk of having to move within melee range.

If you remove that reward (potential for faster life siphoning) by normalizing all siphoning to once per second, then what incentive is there to wield dagger mainhand when you can achieve the exact same amount of life stealing by staying safely at range with axe, sceptre, or staff? It would be the death knell for dagger wielders and run counter to the vision of necros being rewarded the more aggressive they become. We’d be reduced to fey emo dark mages sniping at enemies from the safety of the backline. If I wanted to play ele, I would have rolled one :P

Lastly, the argument goes that because ArenaNet is so deathly afraid of the unkillable vampire bomber, an internal cool down would remove their fears of life siphoning being too OP under the idealized scenario presented above in point #1. With an internal cool down, necros wouldn’t be able to gain insane life stealing with well, Locust Swarm, and dagger bombing. Thus, ArenaNet wouldn’t have to balance around the potential OP scenario and could then give us more viable sustain across the board.

This is the one ICD argument which I feel has some merit. The problem with it is it still fails to address the second point I made earlier; normalizing life siphoning by time removes the only advantage available to dedicated Blood Magic vampires who’s high risk play style would no longer be rewarded.

Next, it assumes ArenaNet is working on the same wavelength as we are and would act logically and rationally by increasing life siphoning by a truly viable amount in exchange for reducing it to processing only once per second. The more likely scenario, based on experience to date, is ArenaNet would reduce processing to once per second but only “improve” the siphoning a handful of points; far below what we would need to survive and making life stealing even more of a joke than it is now.

Finally, the fear of the unkillable vampire bomber is unfounded. On paper, the life siphoning and damage numbers look insane in the idealized scenario. In practice, it doesn’t work that way. The OMG-NECRO-IS-GAINING-100’S-OF-LIFE-SIPHONED-PER-SECOND already has two oft-overlooked built in limiters.

The first is realized when you ask yourself, “Where is that “insane” life siphoning coming from?" Answer: from opponents. If there’s no one inside a well or within proximity of a Locust Swarm, then there is no siphoning occurring. Life stealing doesn’t happen in a vacuum; only in the presence of enemies. A necro who’s siphoning “insane” amounts of health is also facing an insane amount of opponents (5 or more) and taking damage from them while siphoning.

Life siphoning requires the presence of a foe to process; a foe who isn’t going to be very happy about it and will fight back. With the current life siphoning values, a necro is not going to out-siphon the damage they will be receiving; even when going all-in. They will perhaps just keep pace with the damage; and that’s assuming your enemies are polite enough to not blink, dodge, evade, kite, leap, or teleport out of reach of your wells and/or Locust Swarm.

The second limiter, ironically enough, is time. As described earlier, if a necro blows all of their cool downs to life siphon bomb with wells and Locust Swarm, this amounts to a 5 to 10 second burst. Once those skills have run their course, the necro is reduced to using weapon skills for life siphoning (pathetic doesn’t even begin to describe it). Following that burst, the necro will be focused down into the dirt with no means of escape. So much for the myth of the unkillable vampire bomber.

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That’s the fallacy; ArenaNet is balancing life siphoning around an extreme case that exists only on paper because of their failure to take into account that more life siphoned = more enemies surrounding the necro. Enemies who are more than likely out-damaging the necro’s life stealing.

All that life siphon bombing amounts to is a delaying tactic that buys the necro a few seconds. In some instances, those seconds may prove decisive if the necro’s allies can respond in time or leverage it to their advantage (an example of skillful play on both their parts). Once those seconds have ticked down, the necro who doesn’t have an exit plan or allied backup is dead. It is hardly the godmode the devs fear and certainly not a valid case around which to balance life siphoning.

The internal cool down proposition, though well-meaning, is attempting to solve a problem that doesn’t exist except in the minds of the devs; but in doing so, introduces new problems of its own as detailed above.

3) Hybrid: Life siponing with an internal cool down but scaling with number of opponents

Implement the siphon-once-per-second internal cool down suggestion. Even keep the current life siphoning values; insufficient as they are when facing multiple opponents.

Now, add a scalar that increases life siphoning by a percentage based on the number of opponents within a certain radius. Due to our low mobility, I suggest this radius should be 1,200 given that opponents can stay at that range and still hit us while we have a difficult time hitting back.

The scaling will need to be sufficient enough to actually make a difference; I’m recommending 100% per opponent. That may sound OP on paper, but think about it. Traiting Bloodthirst + Vampiric currently steals 40 health per hit. If facing one opponent, a necro would siphon 40 health; two opponents, 80 health; three opponents, 120 health; … five opponents; 200 health per second.

Two-hundred health per second is not astronomical given what other classes can achieve with their sustain mechanics. In light of the fact a necro would have the additional limiters of (a) being surrounded by five opponents to reach that 200 points of siphoning and (b) need to make a hit on one of the opponents to process the life stealing, it balances it out. What’s more is, it’s actually less life siphoning per-second then what necros can achieve now using a well and Locust Swarm bomb. And no one is complaining that our current siphoning, even when bombing, is OP.

The scaling could either cap out at a certain number of opponents (5, 10, or whatever) or have no cap at all. Even though a necro – given the second option and surrounded by dozens of enemies – would have astronomical life siphoning, they would also be taking astronomical damage. So again; it balances out.

The advantages are:

• It eliminates the scenario of life siphoning being OP in the mythological “ideal” scenario I described earlier due to the introduction of the siphon-once-per-second limiter.
• Therefore, ArenaNet would no longer have to balance around that scenario (which, in part, is what led to our non-bombing siphoning being sub-par in the first place).
• This spreads our siphoning out over time rather than concentrated in short bombing bursts; thus leading to a truer long-term sustain.
• It allows necro siphoning to scale with opponents, addressing the short-coming that we’re strong 1 vs 1, but quickly drop off the chart as the number of opponents increases.
• No reworking of the actual siphoning numbers; they can remain as they are.

Of course, this suggestion still suffers from the same drawbacks as the internal-cool-down-only suggestion. Namely:

• This still amounts to a normalizing of life siphoning. Dagger mainhand necros are not rewarded for high risk play and have little to no incentive to use dagger any longer.
• It begs the question of what to do with a trait like Vampiric Precision. If limited to only one siphon-per-second, what happens when the necro crits? Double the amount siphoned for that hit?
• It’s still – like both current life siphoning and the proposed ICD siphoning – a skill-less, binary (do X to trigger Y), and, arguably, boring mechanic. It amounts to, “I swung a sword and stole some life! I swung a sword again and stole some more life! Isn’t that great?!?!”

4) Do nothing; leave siphoning just the way it is.

It will remain sub-par forever as ArenaNet continues to fear the reaper by balancing around that imaginary OP scenario. Maybe we’ll see a couple more points added to our siphons; but nothing that will ever result in true sustain. The de facto repurposing of life siphoning into burst will remain the most optimal use of the mechanic and a niche build that almost nobody plays.

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5) Redesign life siphoning from the ground up.

This is probably what it would take to bring true sustain to the necro profession in GW2. Unfortunately, that entails a lot of work; something the devs have already stated they’re not willing to do. Especially not for necros. It would be years before we would see it come to fruition (if ever).

August 28th, 2012: Here died the best implementation of the blood necro ever conceived. R.I.P.

I share your sentiment Kraag, but I actually take it further and don’t think that Necro can begin to be truly fixed until our sustain issues are solved.

The Necromancer has the worst active defense options available in the game, we should have the best sustain as a tradeoff.

My suggestion is to take the 5 approach, using the vampiric trait I proposed in another thread.

Vampiric – Recover HP whenever you gain LifeForce. 50% of gained LifeForce is added to your current HP but HP recovered is capped at 50% of your current HealingPower (If you gained 2000 LF but had only 1000 healing power you’d be healed for only 500 HP).

Making vampiric trigger only from LF gain adds some strategic choices in a build that chooses to take it, especially since our ranged weapons have worse LF generation than our close range choices, this already rewards a more risky play-style with greater HP recovery.

Secondly, this removes issue of power affecting HP recovery since this healing scales only with Vitality and max LF ( since most LF gains are % based), while also being capped by current Healing power.

For a build to attain what could be considered ludicrous HP recovery ( 100s per second) it would have to expose itself in aggressive attacks while being mostly focused on defensive stats, so you are nigh-unkillable but deal very little damage ( the intended tradeoff for such a gain).

Finally, this implementation is actually pretty simple to be added in the game, it’s a subroutine triggered on LF gain that adds the calculated amount to our HP.

Also, since life siphoning wouldn’t be triggered by hits anymore, traits like vampiric wells could be tweaked to have higher scaling, without fear of mass instant gains because of too many compounding effects.

Hey,
great write up Kraag, you pretty much covered every problem BM has since more then a year.

In response to your suggestions: I am somewhat of a fan of ICD’s. I think they make for easier balancing and also a better insight into how a build can operate in a general situation.
But, like you said, normalizing the amount of health gained via leeching doesn’t reward melee playstyles enough. Therefore i am for a hybrid approach, like you suggested in 3).
Maybe this approach could be implemented by adding a leeching threshhold.?
Every attack adds another stack to the threshold.
Once the limit is reached your next attack would leech health by a fixed amount (+scaling).
Attacking multiple enemies and/or having multiple vampiric traits speeds up the stack generation.
Add an internal CD so that the Leeching procc doesn’t occur too often.
This could be only applied to selected vampiric traits(or only to Vampiric). It might even be an easier implementation since it works similar to Virtue of Justice (Guardian F1).
But on the other hand this comes pretty close to a complete redesign. : /

I don’t know… simply adding an ICD and buffing life leech won’t solve problems. As it looks to me dagger is already one of our least favoured weapons accross all gamemodes and unifying health gain through life leech across all weapones wouldn’t change that so i’m just throwing an idea around.

Lifesteal food was given an ICD because Greatsword user could keep 100% health indefinitely with fast Aoe attacks.

If this is ANET’s concern, then perhaps an ICD is appropriate.

Meanwhile, the Necromancer’s problem is that lifesteal is tiny and attacks are slow. This limits the whole trait line to use only for dagger. If the amounts were bigger, then it could be for all Necromancers.

Lifesteal traited necromancer with lifesteal food is not Imba, so lifesteal can be safely raised to this level.

I cant comment on a pve perspective because i really dont pve. I play tournaments against some of the top teams (i think im ranked around 800) and every necro seems to run the terrormancer build. Nobody in the history of competetive tpvp has gone into the blood line for the vampiric traits (correct me if im wrong). However, I do have perspective with WvW in tier 1 megablobs. I get a good chunk of health off of aoe pulsing effects because they almost always hit 5 targets. These include all wells, locust swarm, and plague form. Plague form with locust swarm can both hit 5 targets a sec. If i pop all my wells(i usually run 2), hit locust swarm, and dive into plague to blind. I usually can tag upwards of 100 people in the first 15 key seconds of the engagement. I have about 50% crit rate so with vampiric precision im averaging about about 50 health a hit. I can siphon over 5k health easily in a short time frame even with this weak scaling because the nature of the aoe pulses. Then i can spam staff 1 which manages to pierce along will all my aoe marks. I have extremely good survivability and can use DS to absorb damage if i get caught out of position. It usually takes being largely outnumbered or catching a static field with no stunbreak/plague form followed by the melle train to down me. This is why many top guilds have been running variations of asciis WvW wellomancer build for a long time because survivability is king (dont rally their downed).

I like this discussion and the points you made. I feel they need to use step “5) Redesign life siphoning from the ground up.” This would take a lot of resources and time. Until then, i think the best bandaid fix would be step “2) Add an internal cool down to life siphoning”.

…but all of that healing counts for naught as you can’t heal in Plague

On top of that, if you’re tagging 100 people and you aren’t dead, then you’re not alive because of the siphoning. You’re alive because nobody is attacking you.

Per ICD making Dagger/Warhorn less risk/reward: yes it would, if you didn’t use wells (which no power build in their right mind would do). The point is that you get the high risk/reward plus AoE siphoning from Vampiric Rituals, which do not need an ICD, because of their inherently limited nature (just like Vampiric Master). This gives you the AoE multi-opponent scaling, assuming you can keep them in, and wells would still proc Vampiric/Vampiric master, but couldn’t reach the very ridiculous amounts of 600 HP/s per well in idealized scenarios. Dagger/warhorn still has ridiculous sustain because of its LF generation, and it still rewards risk/reward.

But the real question in all of this is: do we keep the majority of an entire trait tree useless to every single build but one (and this extends to more weapons, the one with the best siphoning becomes the new balance point), or do we implement some kind of “gate” on the siphoning in ridiculous situations and normalize it, so every Necro gets access to sustain?

nekretaal.6485:

…but all of that healing counts for naught as you can’t heal in Plague

Since when can you not heal in plague!!? Im pretty sure you can heal.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

On top of that, if you’re tagging 100 people and you aren’t dead, then you’re not alive because of the siphoning. You’re alive because nobody is attacking you.

I respectfully disagree. We are a ranged class with DS to sponge some damage as well as plague form which is beastmode in WvW.

Bhawb.7408:

Per ICD making Dagger/Warhorn less risk/reward: yes it would, if you didn’t use wells (which no power build in their right mind would do). The point is that you get the high risk/reward plus AoE siphoning from Vampiric Rituals, which do not need an ICD, because of their inherently limited nature (just like Vampiric Master). This gives you the AoE multi-opponent scaling, assuming you can keep them in, and wells would still proc Vampiric/Vampiric master, but couldn’t reach the very ridiculous amounts of 600 HP/s per well in idealized scenarios. Dagger/warhorn still has ridiculous sustain because of its LF generation, and it still rewards risk/reward.

But the real question in all of this is: do we keep the majority of an entire trait tree useless to every single build but one (and this extends to more weapons, the one with the best siphoning becomes the new balance point), or do we implement some kind of “gate” on the siphoning in ridiculous situations and normalize it, so every Necro gets access to sustain?

Good points and questions.

Torqky.3682:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

On top of that, if you’re tagging 100 people and you aren’t dead, then you’re not alive because of the siphoning. You’re alive because nobody is attacking you.

I respectfully disagree. We are a ranged class with DS to sponge some damage as well as plague form which is beastmode in WvW.

If you are staying at range, then Locust Swarm and Plague are both useless to you.

Again, if you are siphoning that much, then you are right in the danger zone. It’s not the siphoning that’s keeping you alive in that scenario, it’s the fact you aren’t being attacked (and the fact Plague is stupidly tough to kill anyway, regardless of siphons)

The best suggestion I’ve seen in regards to how to fix siphon is to let us siphon while in shroud. With it being our only way to heal up in shroud it would make the blood line extremely valuable for any necromancer looking for sustain. Transfusion would be the great enabler here and it applies to any build, not just well bombers. I’m very wary of ICD and would like to see alternatives explored before considering it.

nekretaal.6485:

Meanwhile, the Necromancer’s problem is that lifesteal is tiny and attacks are slow. This limits the whole trait line to use only for dagger. If the amounts were bigger, then it could be for all Necromancers.

Lifesteal traited necromancer with lifesteal food is not Imba, so lifesteal can be safely raised to this level.

And there is the next Problem, both share the same Traitline. So you can eather buff you dagger or siphon, which is pretty bad right now. Same for Wells, a melee dagger well build or a vampiric-well build doesn’t work. All those build would need >=50Point in Bloodmagic.

In my opinion an iCD (0.5s) wouldn’t be that bad, if we get more benefit out of our siphons. right now you don’t feel that siphons would keep you alive so the question is are they worth using anyway?

I think it wouldn’t be that bad, if we could get about 300hp per hit and 500hp per crit, while reducing our heal skill by lets say 50% if we use all siphon traits (not sure about the numbers). So this build would be unique, strong, but counter able with blinds, immobilize , blocks, stuns …

Fungalfoot.7213:

The best suggestion I’ve seen in regards to how to fix siphon is to let us siphon while in shroud. With it being our only way to heal up in shroud it would make the blood line extremely valuable for any necromancer looking for sustain. Transfusion would be the great enabler here and it applies to any build, not just well bombers. I’m very wary of ICD and would like to see alternatives explored before considering it.

I think siphoning while in DS should be a new grandmaster, with the current Vampiric Rituals should be moved to master, or if it isn’t that strong make it a master trait and keep vampiric rituals at GM, but buffed.

Okay, I’ll bite. Since you actually went through the effort of posting a huge wall of text, I suppose it’s the least I can do. I’d like to begin by saying that I’m not necessarily committed to the idea of ICDs on the vampiric traits (by which I mean vampiric and vampiric precision) – there are several ways to peel the onion, of which ICDs are merely one. I argue for their implementation because I consider it an easy and cost effective solution to the problem. And since your arguments against them is primarily where I think your reasoning falls short, I’ll confine myself to addressing those points for the time being in order to keep the discussion as brief and manageable as I can – even though there’s actually a lot more to discuss in that gargantuan post of yours (which by the way was an interesting read).

Anyways, on with the show.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

First, if we’re reduced to only one siphon per second, then the amount siphoned is going to have to sky rocket far beyond its current level to make it viable. Something on the order of 200 or more life siphoned per-second (on hit, of course) to make it even remotely worth traiting. Given the painfully slow rate at which ArenaNet is “improving” our siphons, it will be a very long time before we see a value that high (if ever).

The first part merely illustrates the purpose of ICDs. Obviously the numbers would increase to compensate, that’s the whole point. I think 200 is perhaps a slightly high number, it all depends on how much you want to let them scale with healing power, but let’s not get bogged down in specifics. The real argument you’re offering here is essentially that ICDs are a bad idea because a.net disagrees with the community on the viability of life siphons (and as a result things are improving too slowly).

That much is true, but the alternative is arguing the wrong point for no better reason than that a.net agrees with it, and that’s just nonsensical. You might have an easier time persuading them, but I for one will stick to arguing the point that I believe best supports the necromancer class. The real test of a solution is not whether a.net agrees (we know they don’t), but whether or not it works.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

Secondly, normalizing life siphoning by time would not lead to a broader use of it by necros across different builds. Rather, it would simply shift the life siphoning meta from dagger/warhorn to another weapon set. Think about it. Currently, the only advantage the dagger wielder has over other necro weapon sets is the speed with which they can complete an auto-attack rotation. This allows them to siphon life faster which, in turn, is balanced by their greater risk of having to move within melee range.

“Normalizing” life siphons will spread life siphoning to the builds that can afford the opportunity cost. It’s that simple. If giving up other traits to put points in blood magic is worth it to a given build, then that build will make the tradeoff. And if all weapon sets have viable builds associated with them that can afford the sacrifice, all weapon sets will be able to enjoy the benefits of life siphons in equal measure.

As for the dagger, your argument boils down to this: mainhand dagger is too weak (or awarded disproportionately) if it cannot make use of non-cooldown based life siphons, therefore life siphons should remain effectively nonfunctional for other weapon sets so that mainhand dagger can be a special snowflake. This, however, is simply backwards logic. If you think the dagger should be awarded better for additional risk, simply adjust the inherent dagger skills (in this case probably dagger #2) to compensate. There is no reason whatsoever to bar other weapon sets from what should otherwise be a universally applicable mechanic.

Incidentally, if you were arguing that mainhand dagger is an underwhelming weapon that needs some love, I’d agree – but sacrificing the vampiric traits to accommodate it is hardly the answer. That’s simply keeping one failed mechanic in play to act as a crutch for another.

1/2

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

Lastly, the argument goes that because ArenaNet is so deathly afraid of the unkillable vampire bomber, an internal cool down would remove their fears of life siphoning being too OP under the idealized scenario presented above in point #1. With an internal cool down, necros wouldn’t be able to gain insane life stealing with well, Locust Swarm, and dagger bombing. Thus, ArenaNet wouldn’t have to balance around the potential OP scenario and could then give us more viable sustain across the board.

This is the one ICD argument which I feel has some merit. The problem with it is it still fails to address the second point I made earlier; normalizing life siphoning by time removes the only advantage available to dedicated Blood Magic vampires who’s high risk play style would no longer be rewarded.

Same argument, same rebuttal. If you feel certain builds aren’t being rewarded enough for the risk they take, adjust them to compensate. There is no compelling reason for sacrificing what is meant to be generally useful traits on the altar of a few select builds.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

A necro who’s siphoning “insane” amounts of health is also facing an insane amount of opponents (5 or more) and taking damage from them while siphoning.

The latter part of your argument (of which the above is merely a brief extract) operates under the assumption that for each additional opponent, the necromancer is taking damage from that opponent. This, however, is only true if 1) you’re the only target present against multiple opponents or 2) you’re at the receiving end of an organized effort to burst you down.

In the first scenario you’ve put yourself in a bad situation and quite frankly deserve to die. Your defensive mechanics are meant to be inadequate in that situation. The second case is really what’s interesting here. Theoretically, life siphons could become a defense against focus fire. The problem, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, is that in order to be functional under such circumstances, life siphons would have to generate an incredible amount of life over a period of a few seconds. Of course, in turn, that makes siphons hugely overpowered in cases where there are multiple opponents present but the necromancer isn’t taking damage from all (or even any) of them. And outside of organized PvP, these situations occur all the time.

The true solution to your predicament is not life siphons. What you’re really asking for is a panic button. And one of the reasons why good panic buttons scale for damage taken rather than damage dealt is that it keeps them from spiraling out of control under certain circumstances. Mist form, for example, is just mist form, regardless of whatever interactions take place between you and your opponents. Now I’m sure we can agree that necromancers are woefully underequipped in this regard – to a certain extent by design – but life siphoning is not a good candidate for burst defense, and you would probably be better off looking elsewhere.

2/2

Gonna agree with manacraft there. A panic button of sorts + some sort of normalization to LF is probably the route to go. I might argue that D/WH should still have some sort of leg up in the lifesteal department, but not so much that it throws the balance off entirely. This could easily be accomplished by buffing Life Siphon.

I don’t agree with the concept of life-siphoning at all I guess. Balancewise all it means is that our damage and self-healing has to be lowered by the amount we gain back in siphoning.
That combined with the implementation of DS at the moment makes me reaaaaally not want necro to be balanced around siphons.

Plus when you think about it, gaining life force is kind of a siphon. You refill your second hp bar by doing damage. I rather have that and our self-healing capabilities balanced properly than some wonky hp siphon crap, that’s just a bland compensation for lowering damage/selfhealing in other areas.

Kiriakulos.1690:

I share your sentiment Kraag, but I actually take it further and don’t think that Necro can begin to be truly fixed until our sustain issues are solved.

The Necromancer has the worst active defense options available in the game, we should have the best sustain as a tradeoff.

My suggestion is to take the 5 approach, using the vampiric trait I proposed in another thread.

Vampiric – Recover HP whenever you gain LifeForce. 50% of gained LifeForce is added to your current HP but HP recovered is capped at 50% of your current HealingPower (If you gained 2000 LF but had only 1000 healing power you’d be healed for only 500 HP).

Making vampiric trigger only from LF gain adds some strategic choices in a build that chooses to take it, especially since our ranged weapons have worse LF generation than our close range choices, this already rewards a more risky play-style with greater HP recovery.

Secondly, this removes issue of power affecting HP recovery since this healing scales only with Vitality and max LF ( since most LF gains are % based), while also being capped by current Healing power.

For a build to attain what could be considered ludicrous HP recovery ( 100s per second) it would have to expose itself in aggressive attacks while being mostly focused on defensive stats, so you are nigh-unkillable but deal very little damage ( the intended tradeoff for such a gain).

Finally, this implementation is actually pretty simple to be added in the game, it’s a subroutine triggered on LF gain that adds the calculated amount to our HP.

Also, since life siphoning wouldn’t be triggered by hits anymore, traits like vampiric wells could be tweaked to have higher scaling, without fear of mass instant gains because of too many compounding effects.

I think this idea has merit. It has some built in limiters to prevent the siphoning from becoming OP, it creates a kind of synergy with our profession-specific mechanic, allows a greater variety of builds to benefit from life siphoning, and adds some additional incentive for equiping spectral skills.

We’d have to be careful that a necro running spectrals wouldn’t become unkillable. With the ICDs that already exist for those skills, it may not be as much of an issue, though.

It’s similar to a suggestion I made which calls for redesigning Blood to Power to heal based on Life Force gained.

Bellamy.9860:

Hey,
great write up Kraag, you pretty much covered every problem BM has since more then a year.

In response to your suggestions: I am somewhat of a fan of ICD’s. I think they make for easier balancing and also a better insight into how a build can operate in a general situation.
But, like you said, normalizing the amount of health gained via leeching doesn’t reward melee playstyles enough. Therefore i am for a hybrid approach, like you suggested in 3).
Maybe this approach could be implemented by adding a leeching threshhold.?
Every attack adds another stack to the threshold.
Once the limit is reached your next attack would leech health by a fixed amount (+scaling).
Attacking multiple enemies and/or having multiple vampiric traits speeds up the stack generation.
Add an internal CD so that the Leeching procc doesn’t occur too often.
This could be only applied to selected vampiric traits(or only to Vampiric). It might even be an easier implementation since it works similar to Virtue of Justice (Guardian F1).
But on the other hand this comes pretty close to a complete redesign. : /

I don’t know… simply adding an ICD and buffing life leech won’t solve problems. As it looks to me dagger is already one of our least favoured weapons accross all gamemodes and unifying health gain through life leech across all weapones wouldn’t change that so i’m just throwing an idea around.

Good ideas. I had suggested, as one possible alternative, a redesign of Vampiric Precision which builds up stacks with each critical hit, delivering a larger siphon once the stack limit is reached. The stacks then reset to zero to be built up again with each crit.

Bhawb.7408:

But the real question in all of this is: do we keep the majority of an entire trait tree useless to every single build but one (and this extends to more weapons, the one with the best siphoning becomes the new balance point), or do we implement some kind of “gate” on the siphoning in ridiculous situations and normalize it, so every Necro gets access to sustain?

In theory, it might work if the time gating of siphoning was accompanied by a significant increase in the amount being siphoned. I have no issue with a nerf if there’s a commensurate and simultaneous buff to balance it.

However, ArenaNet’s actions to date do not fill me with confidence. The most likely scenario is ArenaNet would introduce the ICD time gate but would not increase the amount of siphoning enough; leaving life stealing still sub-optimal.

Even if they have some long range vision of adding viable sustain to necromancy, their approach of “nerf something today and then slowly add buffs over the next 6 to 18 months” is woefully inadequate.

I don’t want life stealing time gated now, then have to hang on ArenaNet’s promises that someday the siphoning will be raised to a realistic level. Promises that may never materialize. Especially not after their Blood Magic “improvements” shell game of the October 15th, 2013 patch.

Fungalfoot.7213:

The best suggestion I’ve seen in regards to how to fix siphon is to let us siphon while in shroud. With it being our only way to heal up in shroud it would make the blood line extremely valuable for any necromancer looking for sustain. Transfusion would be the great enabler here and it applies to any build, not just well bombers. I’m very wary of ICD and would like to see alternatives explored before considering it.

Though I would personally love this, it would only be for the OP trolly LULZ I would get out of it. Though I agree it doesn’t make much sense that there’s no synergy between our healing line and our profession-specific mechanic, I do see how necromancers are a special exception in this case.

If we can heal in DS, then there would be builds that would be nigh-unkillable. It reduces to simply this:

• While taking damage to normal health, build up Life Force.
• Switch to Death Shroud.
• Lose Life Force to damage in Death Shroud, but heal normal health pool.
• Run out of Life Force or voluntarily exit Death Shroud, returning to a full or near-full normal health pool.
• Rinse and repeat the above.

Convoluted mechanics could be implemented in an attempt to stave off this scenario (caps, ICDs, etc.). It’s a very slippery slope, though, which could lead to de facto invulnerability if we’re not careful. So though I may not like it, I can see ArenaNet’s logic in not allowing healing in DS and agree that it could potentially be very unbalancing if it were allowed.

But I do agree with being wary of ICDs for our current life siphoning.

whyme.3281:

In my opinion an iCD (0.5s) wouldn’t be that bad, if we get more benefit out of our siphons.

There lies the crux. Would we get better siphons if an ICD were implemented? If not, then an ICD would be the final nail in the coffin for life siphoning builds.

ManaCraft.5630:

The first part merely illustrates the purpose of ICDs. Obviously the numbers would increase to compensate, that’s the whole point.

I disagree that it would be obvious that the numbers would increase to compensate (even though that’s exactly what should be done). ArenaNet has demonstrated a too-cautious approach to increasing life siphoning. To assume they would increase the numbers sufficiently to make for viable sustain is not supported by experience to date.

Understand that I’m not 100% against the idea of ICD (though I’m not 100% for it, either). It’s that I’m most definitely against adding an ICD if the life siphoning numbers remain inadequate to provide sustain.

ManaCraft.5630:

“Normalizing” life siphons will spread life siphoning to the builds that can afford the opportunity cost. It’s that simple. If giving up other traits to put points in blood magic is worth it to a given build, then that build will make the tradeoff. And if all weapon sets have viable builds associated with them that can afford the sacrifice, all weapon sets will be able to enjoy the benefits of life siphons in equal measure.

As for the dagger, your argument boils down to this: mainhand dagger is too weak (or awarded disproportionately) if it cannot make use of non-cooldown based life siphons, therefore life siphons should remain effectively nonfunctional for other weapon sets so that mainhand dagger can be a special snowflake. This, however, is simply backwards logic. If you think the dagger should be awarded better for additional risk, simply adjust the inherent dagger skills (in this case probably dagger #2) to compensate. There is no reason whatsoever to bar other weapon sets from what should otherwise be a universally applicable mechanic.

Incidentally, if you were arguing that mainhand dagger is an underwhelming weapon that needs some love, I’d agree – but sacrificing the vampiric traits to accommodate it is hardly the answer. That’s simply keeping one failed mechanic in play to act as a crutch for another.

I’m not arguing against allowing other weapon sets/builds to have access to better sustain (however one defines it). Quite the contrary, I want all of necromancy to achieve better sustain. It’s the implementation of ICDs alone, with no or insufficient compensation in the life siphoning numbers, that I’m arguing against and which – IMHO – would be the likely outcome given ArenaNets track record to date where life siphoning is concerned.

If ICD were implemented, the life siphoning numbers increased to truly viable levels, and perhaps a tweak to dagger #2 (as you suggest) or the addition of a smaller siphon in the auto-attack, then I’d be willing to try it. I just don’t see it playing out that way.

If an ICD is added but the siphoning were increased 10 points (let’s say for the sake of argument), life stealing would become a completely trash build that would do even less for necromancer sustain than it does now. But ArenaNet would feel satisfied they had done something to improve sustain (“Hey, we added the ICD you were all asking for and improved the siphoning numbers.”) and it would be many months before they would revisit it again. It would become the Blood Magic line’s Dhuumfire. That’s the scenario I’m attempting to avoid.

ManaCraft.5630:

Same argument, same rebuttal. If you feel certain builds aren’t being rewarded enough for the risk they take, adjust them to compensate. There is no compelling reason for sacrificing what is meant to be generally useful traits on the altar of a few select builds.

I’d have no problem with seeing adjustments for certain builds. However, the discussion was limited to the potential impact of ICDs alone on the current state of life siphoning. If we want to discuss adding compensatory mechanisms for builds that may be adversely impacted by the addition of ICDs, I’m all for it. I’m very much a proponent of seeing sustain improved for the class as a whole.

The discussion was also meant to demonstrate that ArenaNet’s current balancing approach to life siphoning is inadequate in any form. The addition of ICDs would only compound the problem rather than resolve it as long as they continue to err so far on the side of caution. This goes beyond mere mechanics and is instead a fundamental flaw in their design philosophy of creating a sustain profession with no sustain.

Until that changes, no amount of tweaking, adding ICDs, compensatory mechanisms, or any other suggestions we can come up with will improve our situation. They need to sit down and take a long, hard look at what they’ve done with the class and ask themselves, “How can we honestly claim that necromancers – the supposed masters of attrition and sustain – are anything but?”

ManaCraft.5630:

The true solution to your predicament is not life siphons. What you’re really asking for is a panic button. And one of the reasons why good panic buttons scale for damage taken rather than damage dealt is that it keeps them from spiraling out of control under certain circumstances. Mist form, for example, is just mist form, regardless of whatever interactions take place between you and your opponents. Now I’m sure we can agree that necromancers are woefully underequipped in this regard – to a certain extent by design – but life siphoning is not a good candidate for burst defense, and you would probably be better off looking elsewhere.

What I’m really asking for is sustain for a profession touted as being the master of same. At one point we were advertised as:

“They have very high health and the ability to extend that health through the use of the Death Shroud plus the ability to heal themselves through life-stealing skills, leading to a profession that is very hard to put down.”

That, of course, is no longer on the official site; perhaps they’ve decided to take necromancers in a different direction. It certainly is no longer that case that we’re “…a profession that is very hard to put down.”

However, if we are to become masters of sustain, the profession will need some redesign. As I’ve stated in other posts, life siphoning is only one piece of that puzzle; I don’t expect it to be our sole source of sustain nor limited to specific builds at the expense of others.

There’s a host of creative suggestions that have been made on this forum for how to achieve the goal of improved sustain; including ICD. My argument against ICD is not an argument against its merits. Rather, it is an argument against its implementation in a vacuum, without adequate compensation in other areas; something I fear would happen based on ArenaNet’s history to date coupled with their fear of life siphoning becoming OP.

Life Siphoning works fine in big group fights, not so much with roaming. And believe me, when I say it works fine, I mean I use it religiously and rarely get close to dead even with people attacking me.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

I’m not arguing against allowing other weapon sets/builds to have access to better sustain (however one defines it). Quite the contrary, I want all of necromancy to achieve better sustain.

Okay, well since we seem to agree here, let’s move on.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

I’d have no problem with seeing adjustments for certain builds. However, the discussion was limited to the potential impact of ICDs alone on the current state of life siphoning.

Your first post reads to me as precisely the opposite of those two statements, but if we agree on this as well then I’m hitting the fast forward button again.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

My argument against ICD is not an argument against its merits. Rather, it is an argument against its implementation in a vacuum, without adequate compensation in other areas; something I fear would happen based on ArenaNet’s history to date coupled with their fear of life siphoning becoming OP.

The rest of your post basically revolves around this point. For the record, I’m sure you could probably diagnose half the users on this forum, myself included, with varying degrees of Anetophobia™. There’s always the risk that we’ll end up not with what we ask for, but some kittenized version of it instead. But fear is not a rational basis for decision making. Speaking of which, it’s probably also true that a.net are still afraid of what they saw during the beta. They went the wrong distance down the right road, and as a result we must now drag them back to the idea of attrition kicking and screaming. What a.net really needs to do is hit “Shake It Off!”, stack and buff, and head back into the fray.

As for implementing ICDs in a vacuum, I don’t think anyone was ever arguing that point. ICDs are merely a necessary side effect of letting vampiric traits scale more aggressively with healing power. And even if you get the sustainability part of the equasion right, that still leaves the issues of appropriate levels of DoT and lockdown – neither of which solves the problem in a vacuum either. You need to get all of it right.

Whether a.net shares the same understanding, only time will tell. But we have no choice other than to work with them, and that means giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Something not addressed.

Even with scaling for multiple hits, or AoE vampiric, siphon is not a good solution to sustain, because without stability, escapes, or invuln, the Necro is still put on lockdown by multiple enemies focusing him. If he can’t hit people, he can’t sustain, and if he is focused, he can’t hit people. He’s getting stunned, punted, knocked down, immobilized, etc.

ManaCraft.5630:

As for implementing ICDs in a vacuum, I don’t think anyone was ever arguing that point. ICDs are merely a necessary side effect of letting vampiric traits scale more aggressively with healing power. And even if you get the sustainability part of the equasion right, that still leaves the issues of appropriate levels of DoT and lockdown – neither of which solves the problem in a vacuum either. You need to get all of it right.

I don’t believe anyone who is a proponent of ICD was arguing that it would be implemented in a vacuum. My post was more cautionary, a way of saying, “Careful what we ask for and how we word it. Condimancers were asking for more damage and look what happened; Dhuumfire!” I don’t want to see ArenaNet only hear the “Please implement ICD…” portion of the request to add ICD AND more aggressive siphoning.

And, yes, it all needs to be gotten right. I was constraining this discussion to ICD, but throughout my post history I have been a proponent of improved sustain for necros in all areas; not just life siphoning. I just don’t want to see it gotten wrong. My concern with ICD is they will get it wrong.

If they were to implement ICD, I can easily see them failing to implement sufficient siphoning to go along with it. To have any positive effect on our sustain, the two must go hand-in-hand and in the same patch; not add ICD in patch X then slowly increase the siphoning numbers once per quarterly patch thereafter. It has to happen simultaneously; ICD plus a significant boost to siphoning that puts us on par with the healing-per-second that other professions enjoy.

Anything short of that, and it will be a failure that we’ll have to live with for who knows how many months before they get around to setting it right. How long have we had to endure the Dhuumfire fiasco and only now are they hinting at changing it. I don’t want the same to happen with ICDs.

ManaCraft.5630:

Whether a.net shares the same understanding, only time will tell. But we have no choice other than to work with them, and that means giving them the benefit of the doubt.

Up to a point. They’re a business. They stay in business by providing a product or service that the buying public wants. Fail to do that and the clients will go somewhere else. They’ve been given the benefit of the doubt many times in the past, only to fail to deliver once too often. You can only do that to your customers so many times before consumer confidence fades.

They’ve had sufficient time and the community has been patient and trusting. Over fourteen months later, it’s high time to start producing results rather than empty promises. Bottom line is necromancers are far from being the attrition and sustain class they were touted as being. The time for excuses is over and it’s now time to fix what’s broken.

Understand, too, that this is coming from a player who was a devoted fan of GW1 for 7 years and bought GW2 largely on the strength of the relationship that had been established with ArenaNet during that time. If GW2 had been made by any studio other than ArenaNet, I would have quit this game a few months ago.

The only reason I’m still here and writing 15,000 word posts is because I still have some faith in the company, hope they can do right by the class, and belief in the potential this game possesses. But all three have been worn very, very thin of late and I’m finding it more and more difficult to continue giving them the benefit of the doubt when they continue to disappoint.

Pendragon.8735:

Something not addressed.

Even with scaling for multiple hits, or AoE vampiric, siphon is not a good solution to sustain, because without stability, escapes, or invuln, the Necro is still put on lockdown by multiple enemies focusing him. If he can’t hit people, he can’t sustain, and if he is focused, he can’t hit people. He’s getting stunned, punted, knocked down, immobilized, etc.

Yes, that’s another one of those problematic puzzle pieces that all fall under the heading of “sustain” for the necromancer. I can accept no vigor for the class and poor to non-existent disengage options. However, for a profession that’s supposed to just stand there toe-to-toe with opponents and facetank everything, stability makes perfect sense for the necromancer; even more so than for guardians.

In another thread, Bhawb and I had knocked around the idea of a trait or skill that allows the necro to gain aggressive buffs (might, fury, retaliation) in response to either how many hits they’re taking or how many opponents are in the area. It would be kind of like an anti-guardian buffing mechanic. The necro doesn’t apply the buffs directly to themself, but, instead, gains them in direct proportion to the amount of aggression and violence in their vicinity.

Perhaps something similar could be used to grant stability to the necro in response to receiving CC. It’s not a self-applied buff; it only processes in response to being CC-ed. Thus, the first CC hitting the necro would process as normal.

It then functions like a modified version of Defiant. If the necro gets hit with another CC while the first one is still in effect, the necro gains 1 second of stability. Each additional CC received while the necro is benefiting from stability adds 1 additional second of duration to their existing stability.

To return the necro to a state where they’re vulnerable to CC again requires that an opponent either remove the necro’s stability in some fashion (e.g. Corrupt Boon, etc.) or the stability runs its course and comes to the end of it duration.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

If they were to implement ICD, I can easily see them failing to implement sufficient siphoning to go along with it. To have any positive effect on our sustain, the two must go hand-in-hand and in the same patch; not add ICD in patch X then slowly increase the siphoning numbers once per quarterly patch thereafter. It has to happen simultaneously; ICD plus a significant boost to siphoning that puts us on par with the healing-per-second that other professions enjoy.

Personally I’m not actually so concerned about that. Whether things happen over the course of a single patch or two or even three isn’t a deal breaker for me. Whatever they implement, if anything, probably won’t be perfect the first time around anyway. No battle plan survives contact with the enemy. The imminent challenge, it seems to me, is getting a.net to move in the right direction to begin with.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

Understand, too, that this is coming from a player who was a devoted fan of GW1 for 7 years and bought GW2 largely on the strength of the relationship that had been established with ArenaNet during that time.

Ditto, and I agree that the history of our class so far in GW2 holds its fair share of disappointing moments, but I won’t pour more rain onto that particular parade. Enough threads have gone down that road already.

Pendragon.8735:

Something not addressed.

Even with scaling for multiple hits, or AoE vampiric, siphon is not a good solution to sustain, because without stability, escapes, or invuln, the Necro is still put on lockdown by multiple enemies focusing him. If he can’t hit people, he can’t sustain, and if he is focused, he can’t hit people. He’s getting stunned, punted, knocked down, immobilized, etc.

I think manacraft kind of touched on the issue:

ManaCraft.5630:

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

A necro who’s siphoning “insane” amounts of health is also facing an insane amount of opponents (5 or more) and taking damage from them while siphoning.

The latter part of your argument (of which the above is merely a brief extract) operates under the assumption that for each additional opponent, the necromancer is taking damage from that opponent. This, however, is only true if 1) you’re the only target present against multiple opponents or 2) you’re at the receiving end of an organized effort to burst you down.

In the first scenario you’ve put yourself in a bad situation and quite frankly deserve to die. Your defensive mechanics are meant to be inadequate in that situation. The second case is really what’s interesting here. Theoretically, life siphons could become a defense against focus fire. The problem, as I’m sure you’ve guessed, is that in order to be functional under such circumstances, life siphons would have to generate an incredible amount of life over a period of a few seconds. Of course, in turn, that makes siphons hugely overpowered in cases where there are multiple opponents present but the necromancer isn’t taking damage from all (or even any) of them. And outside of organized PvP, these situations occur all the time.

The true solution to your predicament is not life siphons. What you’re really asking for is a panic button. And one of the reasons why good panic buttons scale for damage taken rather than damage dealt is that it keeps them from spiraling out of control under certain circumstances. Mist form, for example, is just mist form, regardless of whatever interactions take place between you and your opponents. Now I’m sure we can agree that necromancers are woefully underequipped in this regard – to a certain extent by design – but life siphoning is not a good candidate for burst defense, and you would probably be better off looking elsewhere.

2/2

I bolded some of the key points he makes. Yes, necro is vulnerable to cc/stunlock/punts/immobilize. Yes, necro lacks extra dodges via vigor. This is all working as intended. Giving us stability or vigor would synergize extremely well with our “attrition”. The devs could give us these buffs, but they would have to either nerf us elsewhere or buff the other classes to compensate.

But i think it would be best open a new thread if you think we should be going more towards active defense because i think siphon isn’t the answer. I think we should focus on the vampiric traits with the assumption that we arn’t going to get any active defense. Although if you read the development thread, it looks like Jon is already trying to give us some help by removing the weakening shroud ICD. Aoe weakness on the enemy combined with deathshroud has potential to limit some focused burst on us. *But as mana stated, if you put yourself in a bad sitaution you “quite frankly deserve to die.” *

Lets get back to talking about how the vampiric traits can be implemented better.

Another possible option would be to make utilities such as wells not proc the siphon(wells siphon trait would work and could drain more). Eliminating these pulsing effects would make the only other pulsing effect locust swarm which requires you to be in melee range(more risk). This may allow them to buff the baseline number or the scaling to a certain extent?

It also would encourage more dagger warhorn builds because they would have some more staying power to compensate for the pinball cc they receive. Thoughts?

“What I’m really asking for is sustain for a profession touted as being the master of same. At one point we were advertised as:
“They have very high health and the ability to extend that health through the use of the Death Shroud plus the ability to heal themselves through life-stealing skills, leading to a profession that is very hard to put down.””

For a class that was originally designed for their sustain abilities, I would simply like to see necros have the same amount of sustain that warriors currently have with their passive signets. Life stealing is an activated, skill-based ability. With extremely limited access to mobility for resetting fights, I wouldn’t think that this is too much to ask.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

If we can heal in DS, then there would be builds that would be nigh-unkillable. It reduces to simply this:

• While taking damage to normal health, build up Life Force.
• Switch to Death Shroud.
• Lose Life Force to damage in Death Shroud, but heal normal health pool.
• Run out of Life Force or voluntarily exit Death Shroud, returning to a full or near-full normal health pool.
• Rinse and repeat the above.g.

Except that there are no healing skills in Death Shroud.

Healers from other classes shouldn’t be penalized for having a necro on the team.

Siphons require you to stay in the fight. Even Something like a buffed siphon at 250 points siphon is not going to keep up with healsig, and the heals per second are much less than that because the life blast skill speed is so slow. Compare to thief/ele/warr/ranger healing: stealth or warp to get out of combat, full health 2 sec later.

And what about the scenario where a necromancer eats a big hit while the heal is on its very long cooldown. The class can’t get any heal from Deathshroud and can’t exit combat either.

Pendragon.8735:

Something not addressed.

Even with scaling for multiple hits, or AoE vampiric, siphon is not a good solution to sustain, because without stability, escapes, or invuln, the Necro is still put on lockdown by multiple enemies focusing him. If he can’t hit people, he can’t sustain, and if he is focused, he can’t hit people. He’s getting stunned, punted, knocked down, immobilized, etc.

That’s called counterplay. You shouldn’t be able to life steal without any recourse, it’d make no sense. The only counters to high sustain in this game is poison, burst, and CC. We’re pretty hard to keep poison on, compared to pretty much anyone else, we’re nearly impossible to burst in one go without multiple people; really CC is the biggest answer to us. And that is a good thing, it pushes a play-counterplay between enemies.

Bhawb.7408:

Pendragon.8735:

Something not addressed.

Even with scaling for multiple hits, or AoE vampiric, siphon is not a good solution to sustain, because without stability, escapes, or invuln, the Necro is still put on lockdown by multiple enemies focusing him. If he can’t hit people, he can’t sustain, and if he is focused, he can’t hit people. He’s getting stunned, punted, knocked down, immobilized, etc.

That’s called counterplay. You shouldn’t be able to life steal without any recourse, it’d make no sense. The only counters to high sustain in this game is poison, burst, and CC. We’re pretty hard to keep poison on, compared to pretty much anyone else, we’re nearly impossible to burst in one go without multiple people; really CC is the biggest answer to us. And that is a good thing, it pushes a play-counterplay between enemies.

Agree. Sustain and Lifesteal in general should be how a necro executes domination over an extended fighting period.
If a necro doesn’t get hit by a coordinated spike and disable(s), he should be able to recover with ease. The burden of skill has to be somewhat higher on the attacker.
That is the whole idea of sustain.
But as it is right now, necro has no recovery. You get spiked/bursted because thats how most builds in pvp operate and fling conditions in an attempt to take the other person down with you. And that still works cause of dhumbfire mark spam.
So necro still needs sustain and that sustain should be counterable by burst and CC. And at that point you pretty much need one 6-8 second stab utility and everything hopefully works out.

I don’t know what anyone is worried about with life siphon and hitting multiple enemies.

We have examples from other games – like wow.

Both shadow priests and warlocks had the ability to siphon life, and the consequence of tagging so many enemies always overshadowed the benefit.

Ghostextechnica.3270:

I don’t know what anyone is worried about with life siphon and hitting multiple enemies.

We have examples from other games – like wow.

Both shadow priests and warlocks had the ability to siphon life, and the consequence of tagging so many enemies always overshadowed the benefit.

Because:
1) This isn’t WoW
2) WoW is not an example of good balance by any remote stretch

Bhawb.7408:

Because:
1) This isn’t WoW
2) WoW is not an example of good balance by any remote stretch

Oh darn, that completely negates my suggestion of looking at other games for examples.

So anyway, Necros need some sort of support function other than for niche fights in a small number of dungeons/fractals. PvE fans get seriously burned if they want to participate in PvE.

How about Blood becomes a good support tree that helps heal the party when dps’ing (on crit etc)?

So how about they raise the scaling to make siphons heal for like 100 BUT the entire party gets healed for that? I don’t think 100 heal is op given the average health pool of 20k+ and it would help the necro be more accepted in a support role.

kailin.4905:

So how about they raise the scaling to make siphons heal for like 100 BUT the entire party gets healed for that? I don’t think 100 heal is op given the average health pool of 20k+ and it would help the necro be more accepted in a support role.

Your “but” is not a tradeoff and with the current implementation of life leech and your idea for party healing, 100 hp leech would never happen.
I, and i think a big part of the community, got the impression that Anet’s balancing approach looks at the extremes.
With that in mind your 100 hp leech would net:
5 targets per second – locust swarm
2* 5 targets per second – WoC and WoS
5 targets per second plague

This equals 20 hits per second simply via vampiric alone and that would amount to 2000 health per second for the entire party(making it effectively 10k healing per second.
Pretty strong i’d say.

Yeah, ANet is pretty much looking at the extremes.

And that would be the extreme in a SPVP point fight scenario. And would allow a necro so take quite a beating. Especially when supplemented with DS.

End result would be a return of the immortal beta necro.

I think ANet should do some testing with keeping siphon numbers where they are, but allow siphoning (not other healing) to work through Death Shroud. The siphoning could still probably use a boost, but it’s something they should look into.

Or healing in general while in DS. I hear necro are a constant issues for elementalists. They notice a health bar dropping in the party UI, lob off a healing AOE, only to the see necro in question pop DS right before the skill lands. End result, one expensive heal spell on cooldown…

Could turn Life Transfer real nasty tho, if they also allowed Transfusion to heal the in DS necro. Something it potentially can, as we know by running out of LF before the channel completes.

A complete Life Transfer with all crits on the pulses could heal for 3384 at least.

digiowl.9620:

Or healing in general while in DS. I hear necro are a constant issues for elementalists. They notice a health bar dropping in the party UI, lob off a healing AOE, only to the see necro in question pop DS right before the skill lands. End result, one expensive heal spell on cooldown…

I think the easiest short-term solution (since I very much doubt we’ll see healing in DS any time soon, if ever) is to change the color of the necro’s health bar in the party UI. This would serve as a visual cue to other players that the necro is in Death Shroud; thus saving a party member from wasting a healing skill on the necro.