Guild Wars 2

Hi guys,

Returning player here. I’m wondering if life stealing builds are viable for PvE grinding? When I took a break the general consensus was that they were not, has this changed with recent patches?
Has anyone had any success with pure life stealing/healing through damage builds when grinding regular mobs?

This has not changed. Life steals are still quite small. Can you combine lifesteals with daggers, high power/precision and well siphoning? Yes. Will this be effective? Somewhat. Will you be tanking like a guardian or ele? Absolutely not.

Nope. Because for some reason necro heal on hit abilities are already to powerful by the developers thoughts and are the only heals in the game that do not in any way scale with healing or power. Vampiric, Vampiric Precision and Vampiric Rituals heal for 25 (38), 31 (51) and 42 respectively (with the numbers in brackets being if you have the Bloodthirst trait, Rituals isnt affected by it) and will never heal for any more than that.

I swear, even if they retooled lifesteal skills to scale with a mere fraction of healing power/power, it’d be so stylish. Get that Vampire mojo working.

Yeah….. Still waiting to build my PVT Dagger Necro

His time will come. When he can lifesteal his way through undeath !

My main is already my healing power, power, toughness guy. I think it’s pretty viable in pve, but I’m probably terribly biased. If it’s not viable (which I think it is) it’s atleast extremely fun.

If the devs ever lets the various life steals scale even slightly with hp/power, the hp, power, toughness build would be a force to be reckoned with.

I have a very viable vampire build, I use it in open world and dungeons in most situations (slightly modified for dungeons). I’m actually not going to be on most of the day but I’ll PM you when I get back and link what I use for you. It’s not as powerful as the most popular builds (all 2-3 of them lol) but I can solo all of Orr except a few of the larger group events (the small champ events i can do solo it just takes for freaking ever lol). The downside is it’s not really effective in larger zergs like the biggest orr events and dragon events, but in those you can pretty much run anything you want anyway and be fine ( I usually swap to a wellbomber). The good part of my build is with a few major traits reshuffling and weapon/utility swap you can very easily slip into a support role without having to reassign traits (via buying a new book).

Life stealing is a supplement. It compliments other builds. Right now there simply isn’t the ground work to make a true life stealing focused build.

Rife.9247:

Hi guys,

Returning player here. I’m wondering if life stealing builds are viable for PvE grinding? When I took a break the general consensus was that they were not, has this changed with recent patches?
Has anyone had any success with pure life stealing/healing through damage builds when grinding regular mobs?

grinding regular mobs? Yeah, lifesteal works just fine. It isn’t huge but with enough crit and utilizing heal on hit/heal on crit traits you will heal for ~90 health per crit(38 for the hit and 51 for crit iirc). If you use the focus with a dagger you’re siphon(w/trait) should heal you for ~3k and reaper’s touch(#4) will give you 3-6s of regen. Top that off with a staff which #2 will give you regen and #4 will transfer conditions.

Of course this begs the question of why are you grinding regular mobs? If you want loot you’re best bet is fractals or AOE events using the staff. But you can definitely kill mobs quickly, siphon some health, and keep yourself relatively full with a siphon build.

I run with 3 pieces of Power/vit/tough armor(head, chest, pants), 3 pieces of berserkers(gloves, boots, shoulders), Berserker’s necklace+earring, the karka exotic accessory, and I’m going for the solaria/lunaria rings(otherwise power/toughness/vit). I get ~50% crit in dagger mode. My siphon does up to 4k damage usually and my melee with crits is probably 2k/s. On regular mobs I tear through them like butter and end with full health usually, just don’t forget to toss in a death shroud as it is a renewable resource.

My current build(copy and paste it since GW2forums hates semi-colons)
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQNAodWjQaZ6VaKbMcKApCPPpgbvjZE8w0HWH;TMALLGZMJA

I’ve done events, fractals up to 10, and WvW with this build without many complaints. I guess my biggest complaint is that the necro traits/skills are so bad that the siphon life traits don’t seem terrible. The class truly needs work and Anet needs to get over their anti-healing stance. On my thief picking traits is hard because they are all quite good, picking traits on my necro is hard because they are all so lackluster/bad.

lifestealing build without a full MM build – Vampiric master trait , is weak and unreliable.
With 6 minions + this trait , your healing will be wonderful.

The healing you can get from food, puts the healing you can get from necro skills to shame…

Get some berry pie, and any crit/life-leech build you want to make becomes viable.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

The good part of my build is with a few major traits reshuffling and weapon/utility swap you can very easily slip into a support role without having to reassign traits (via buying a new book).

Off topic: You don’t have to buy a new book to reassign traits. The trainers have another dialogue option that will let you reassign your traits for 3s 50c at level 80.

On topic: Yes, 30 points in Blood Magic works really, really well in PvE. I ran it some time ago and found that I survived better the more mobs I took on at once, capping out at around 6 or 7. In Orr, no less. Your health bar will jump up and down, it’s fun to watch and play.

lettucemode.3789:

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On topic: Yes, 30 points in Blood Magic works really, really well in PvE. I ran it some time ago and found that I survived better the more mobs I took on at once, capping out at around 6 or 7. In Orr, no less. Your health bar will jump up and down, it’s fun to watch and play.

I run 20/0/20/30/0 w/ bloodthirst, ritual mastery & vampiric rituals. It may not be the best build, but w/ daggers and Wells of Blood, Power, Corruption and Suffering all popped and a huge group of dredge pilled on you in the fractals, it is a lot of fun.

Ezeriel.9574:

The healing you can get from food, puts the healing you can get from necro skills to shame…

Get some berry pie, and any crit/life-leech build you want to make becomes viable.

Thats sad. Anyone know offhand if bloodthirst at least helps life siphon from #2 dagger?

I find it to be insanely fun to be a Lifesteal Necro with MM. Just throw on a superior sigil of water + Omnomberry Ghosts, and it’s like bwa haa haa I have insane heals, and dps as long as not too many aoe’s are thrown down all at the same time, and it makes tanking fun in AC Explore…really fun to just Dagger/Focus things while people are like “Umm why the heck are you meleeing! You’re a clothie!”

Kilger.5490:

Ezeriel.9574:

The healing you can get from food, puts the healing you can get from necro skills to shame…

Get some berry pie, and any crit/life-leech build you want to make becomes viable.

Thats sad. Anyone know offhand if bloodthirst at least helps life siphon from #2 dagger?

Yes it works on #2

Been working for me, but if you want to do it you have to go all the way. Foodbuffs, sigils, skills and traits. The individual heals are not too much but when you put them all together, you’re starting to look at a very survivable build as long as you find someone to hit.