Guild Wars 2

So,

Vampiric & Vampiric Precision, Master Minor Trait & Skill V in Blood Magic.

When I was putting together a build for the Necromancer:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQJAndjc00SbNN+0whbiaBZypdhORgZReqDA-ThBBwAY3fU+B4BAgT9nU6ZCcCAOrEEA-e

I couldn’t really settle on a GM skill for Curses, so I started looking around. I don’t actually care for DS all that much, despite its usefulness in terms of DPS (I tend to use it more like a shield, despite that being inefficient & I know it).

I happen to like the axe skills (quite a lot) & it has been my favorite Necro weapon.

Anyway. I saw the 20% CDR on Wells & said “that.” Especially since I plan on keeping at least 2 Wells at all times.

Long story short…

The life steal traits look pretty useful to me. Am I putting too much value in them or could they be effective in survivability?

Vampiric and Vampiric Precision are fairly worthless. Bloodthirst is only good because of the skills it affects are effective (I’m hesitant to say “good” on Signet of Vampirism, but the active is effective, and Bloodthirst affects it.). Vampiric Rituals some people swear by, but it has always seemed useless to me. Vampiric Master is decent for a couple reasons.

This build seems interesting but its only going to be useful in pve as long as you can dodge. In wvw ppl are just going to get out of your wells. The runes are ok but i don’t see you staying at above 90% hp a lot. Your damage amps also don’t effect the life steals nor do they make you heal more from them.

Personaly i run this build, giving me alot of damage as well as some chessy defense.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQRBHhhG1JNiUbj90glNwhjJ6FKpDhZIeneI+heAqAA-TBCBABmfQAUa/hzUCyqyPU1/AwJAQV1fo4JAEAABwQH6QH6QHakCwc9WA-e

Do you actually have Ascended Zealot’s amulet/rings/trinkets? Last I checked, they didn’t actually exist.

Ops sorry that was just me quick building. Iv not found ascended keepers amulet/ring/trinkets. But the build is solid enough to deal out a lot of damage and still survive in fights.

Sadly the cost to build this build is a little (a lot) expensive. but i believe if your going to do life steal you need to do it right

Dhampyr.2813:

This build seems interesting but its only going to be useful in pve as long as you can dodge. In wvw ppl are just going to get out of your wells. The runes are ok but i don’t see you staying at above 90% hp a lot. Your damage amps also don’t effect the life steals nor do they make you heal more from them.

Personaly i run this build, giving me alot of damage as well as some chessy defense.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQRBHhhG1JNiUbj90glNwhjJ6FKpDhZIeneI+heAqAA-TBCBABmfQAUa/hzUCyqyPU1/AwJAQV1fo4JAEAABwQH6QH6QHakCwc9WA-e

Fortunately I can dodge

So far, the play hasn’t been terribly different than my Elementalist (except the Ele burns down multiples faster, but the Necro takes down singles faster). I run Scholar’s with the Ele, and get fairly solid use out of it. Although I do like Rune of the Pack (Power & Precison? Nice!).

The damage amps are there to deal more damage, not steal life. I know they don’t affect life steal.

I might WvW to camp clear, but I don’t generally player Vs player.

I run a vampiric build and I enjoy it. Your biggest sources of stealing health come from three sources.

The trait to steal health on hit
The trait to steal health on crit
Omnom Berry Pie (66% steal health on crit)

You want a high precision and a fast attacking weapon.

I don’t bother with the sigil and rune. Too subpar vs the above three.

Deamhan.9538:

I run a vampiric build and I enjoy it. Your biggest sources of stealing health come from three sources.

The trait to steal health on hit
The trait to steal health on crit
Omnom Berry Pie (66% steal health on crit)

You want a high precision and a fast attacking weapon.

I don’t bother with the sigil and rune. Too subpar vs the above three.

Funny, considering the sigil out-does both traits combined.

For example, consider at 150 healing power, the absolute minimum to have Vampiric, Vampiric heals you for 31 and Vampiric Precision heals for 39. On a crit, you heal for 70. Superior Sigil of Blood heals for 468 at the same healing power.

This means that assuming only crits, you need to crit 6.7 times in 5 seconds to break even. Now, it’s easy to hit this many times, but in your typical situation, you’re looking at ~9 hits, 4 of which are crits. This is 435 health healed up, which, ironically, is lower than the sigil’s base healing value by 18 health. And the sigil scales at 10% healing power instead of a laughable .4%. This means that as you invest into more healing power, the sigil draws further and further away from Vampiric+Vampiric Precision.

Can’t argue with the omnomberry, though I’d suggest using Ghosts as they last longer and are probably cheaper due to Halloween supply.

I tried, and tried pretty hard, to make a vampiric build worthwhile but ended up with nothing useful to show for it. Food or minion vampirism does far better than any of the other vampiric traits for Necromancer.

To give you a better idea, I value the performance of a full celestial build over a full vampiric build. Neither runes nor traits, with the exception of minion siphons, impressed me as reasonable return on investment. A cleric build with power and healing still does not seem, to me, to scale well enough for traiting Blood Magic. Siphoning wells is just plain ineffective because your target must stand in the well pulses for a tiny heal.

Regen off of staff seems more potent to me than all of Necromancer’s siphons, combined. It has longer up-time and scales with healing, too.

It is really difficult for me to find anything to love in Blood Magic. Wells seem only worth it when zerging in wvw so I rarely run them anymore and vampiric traits are only useful on a full-bunker MM (4/0/6/4/0).

Good grief! I would love to see even Dagger Mastery worth but DM only seems to marginally improve off-hand performance, particularly for condition transfer when running a MM build.

I do apologize for sounding so negative but I could not get a vampiric build to perform as well as other builds

I find that going full vampire (6/2/0/6/0) tends to act as an ongoing passive heal, especially in zerg fights.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Deamhan.9538:

I run a vampiric build and I enjoy it. Your biggest sources of stealing health come from three sources.

The trait to steal health on hit
The trait to steal health on crit
Omnom Berry Pie (66% steal health on crit)

You want a high precision and a fast attacking weapon.

I don’t bother with the sigil and rune. Too subpar vs the above three.

Funny, considering the sigil out-does both traits combined.

For example, consider at 150 healing power, the absolute minimum to have Vampiric, Vampiric heals you for 31 and Vampiric Precision heals for 39. On a crit, you heal for 70. Superior Sigil of Blood heals for 468 at the same healing power.

This means that assuming only crits, you need to crit 6.7 times in 5 seconds to break even. Now, it’s easy to hit this many times, but in your typical situation, you’re looking at ~9 hits, 4 of which are crits. This is 435 health healed up, which, ironically, is lower than the sigil’s base healing value by 18 health. And the sigil scales at 10% healing power instead of a laughable .4%. This means that as you invest into more healing power, the sigil draws further and further away from Vampiric+Vampiric Precision.

Can’t argue with the omnomberry, though I’d suggest using Ghosts as they last longer and are probably cheaper due to Halloween supply.

Suppose I should’ve looked it up before dismissing it. I assumed it only healed the same as the other three sources listed but with a cd that ultimately made it heal for much less. I think I might add it in now, thnx.

Deamhan.9538:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Deamhan.9538:

I run a vampiric build and I enjoy it. Your biggest sources of stealing health come from three sources.

The trait to steal health on hit
The trait to steal health on crit
Omnom Berry Pie (66% steal health on crit)

You want a high precision and a fast attacking weapon.

I don’t bother with the sigil and rune. Too subpar vs the above three.

Funny, considering the sigil out-does both traits combined.

For example, consider at 150 healing power, the absolute minimum to have Vampiric, Vampiric heals you for 31 and Vampiric Precision heals for 39. On a crit, you heal for 70. Superior Sigil of Blood heals for 468 at the same healing power.

This means that assuming only crits, you need to crit 6.7 times in 5 seconds to break even. Now, it’s easy to hit this many times, but in your typical situation, you’re looking at ~9 hits, 4 of which are crits. This is 435 health healed up, which, ironically, is lower than the sigil’s base healing value by 18 health. And the sigil scales at 10% healing power instead of a laughable .4%. This means that as you invest into more healing power, the sigil draws further and further away from Vampiric+Vampiric Precision.

Can’t argue with the omnomberry, though I’d suggest using Ghosts as they last longer and are probably cheaper due to Halloween supply.

Suppose I should’ve looked it up before dismissing it. I assumed it only healed the same as the other three sources listed but with a cd that ultimately made it heal for much less. I think I might add it in now, thnx.

Vampiric and Vampiric Precision combined are weaker than any other source of life stealing you can get, FYI. Omnomberry Ghost steals 325 health on its procs (1 second cooldown), runes and Sigil of Leeching heal for 975 on their procs.

Basically the only time Vampiric/Vampiric Precision start healing for meaningful amounts is with pulsing AoE effects.

For a laugh, try Parasitic Contagion with scepter dagger / dagger horn and spectral optimization. 6.6.0.0.2.

I found this heals quite a bit without a single vampiric trait, if trading CtD were worth it. No Blood Magic is involved.

Bhawb.7408:

Basically the only time Vampiric/Vampiric Precision start healing for meaningful amounts is with pulsing AoE effects.

Do you mean wells? I thought it didn’t work with wells which was why there is the master trait that causes wells to also steal health.

Deamhan.9538:

Bhawb.7408:

Basically the only time Vampiric/Vampiric Precision start healing for meaningful amounts is with pulsing AoE effects.

Do you mean wells? I thought it didn’t work with wells which was why there is the master trait that causes wells to also steal health.

Any hit applies Vampiric, while only crits apply Vampiric Precision. Well of Suffering and Corruption proc both without problem, and Well of Darkness also procs Vampiric.

Vampiric Rituals applies an additional siphon on top of that and makes both Well of Power and Well of Blood also proc Vampiric (and, of course, Vampiric Rituals). Vampiric Precision can only proc on Suffering and Corruption, though, since siphons can’t crit.

And more than that, Locust Swarm is better for both traits than any single well.

Deamhan.9538:

Do you mean wells? I thought it didn’t work with wells which was why there is the master trait that causes wells to also steal health.

WoS/WoC can proc Vampiric and Vampiric Precision 5 times per second each if there are 5 people in the well. Meaning you can get 60 total procs of V/VP from a single 5s well.

Bhawb.7408:

Deamhan.9538:

Do you mean wells? I thought it didn’t work with wells which was why there is the master trait that causes wells to also steal health.

WoS/WoC can proc Vampiric and Vampiric Precision 5 times per second each if there are 5 people in the well. Meaning you can get 60 total procs of V/VP from a single 5s well.

Add Vampiric, Vampiric Precision, and Vampiric Rituals all traited with Bloodthirst + Parasitic Contagion + Sigils&Food… you see where I am going here…

Yeah, it has a really high potential. I’ve done the math before and I cba to do it again (and its not like I’ll ever find it through the “search” function), but it is entirely possible to get a full heal’s worth of extra healing from these traits because of the ridiculous amount they can proc. The problem with the traits though is that they are held back by this fantasy scenario: getting that many procs is pretty much limited to PvE, you will never hit that in PvP and only in WvW when all the planets align. This means that 99% of the time, your traits aren’t procing that much, and they’re being outperformed by other options.

And those other options all have one thing in common: ICDs. Vampiric Master has an effective ICD through the minion attacks, and it doesn’t scale up. Sigils all have ICDs, same with the food. They are effectively gated through some mechanic, which means the best-case scenario is actually pretty common, and so their point of balance is close to what you actually get, unlike the other vampiric traits whose point of balance is out in Narnia.

I’d much rather the Vampiric trait balancing being around the expected situation and let them be downright crazy when the planets align for their perfect situation. There are a lot of cases where they do balance this way, even a couple being on the Necromancer (i.e. Spectral Wall)!

Here’s what I run in WvW and PvE, it’s nothing fancy, but I love it a lot. I’ve survived some crazy zerg situations with it where my Mesmer or Engi would have been annihilated. I might look into swapping Staff for something else, but I love the AoE too much.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fRMQNAW3Yjc00SbPN20wfbihBRyVpmeWwfRWIAA-T1hBABA8EAia/BU0Ncj6PYp8zMlgZfBACAgAwQv5Qv5QHaA-w

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I’d much rather the Vampiric trait balancing being around the expected situation and let them be downright crazy when the planets align for their perfect situation. There are a lot of cases where they do balance this way, even a couple being on the Necromancer (i.e. Spectral Wall)!

Agreed, it seems like a lot of Necro’s skills are capped by theoretical maximums.

Also to note is runes of the mad king. With your elite you can get a heal with about same power as your healing skill with added damage