Guild Wars 2

Hello everyone.

So I would like to ask you if I understand the whole siphon health mechanic right.

First of all, we get the following traits:

1. “Siphon health whenever you hit a foe.”
2. “Siphon health whenever you critical hit.”
3. “Siphoning health is 50% more effective.”

So let’s imply that I have 100% crit chance and I use the Life Siphon skill on my dagger:

“Siphon health from your foe. Damage (9x), healing per pulse.”

There is 9 hits/pulses. I get health for each pulse from the skill (9 pulses). I get health for each pulse from trait 1 (9 hits). I get health for each crit (9 crits). All of the heals are 50% stronger from trait 3.

Am I doing it right? If not, please correct me and forgive me for being wrong.

Also: on normal skill 1 attacks – do I get double health siphon when I crit? (Trait 1 and trait 2).

There is 9 hits/pulses. I get health for each pulse from the skill (9 pulses). I get health for each pulse from trait 1 (9 hits). I get health for each crit (9 crits). All of the heals are 50% stronger from trait 3.

Correct. Each Siphon is independent of the other, including the Vampiric Rituals, Sigil of Blood, and Runes of Vampirism.

Yeah it’s a decent heal if you traited how you described, but it’s still better looking on paper than it is in practice, as are most necro skills. Ojimaru was right, and you can see it in the green healing numbers when you hit life siphon, each mechanic is independent

Each siphon hit/crit counts towards procing your heals. The crit+hit heals for nearly 90hp, so if you crit on all 9 ticks you’ll get ~800 extra health.

If you crit an attack you get both the hit and crit heals. The hit is 38 iirc and the crit is around 52.

In PvE the siphon build isn’t bad since with normal mobs they don’t do insane damage and siphon can heal for like 3-4k. In PvP though it’s absolutely worthless unless you’re against a tank build. PvP has far too much burst and the 90hp a second is barely enough to negate a single bleed let alone 2+. The siphon can work in PvP but it is easily dodged or blocked for most of it’s ticks.

Sigil of blood at level 80 will heal for 452 and has a cooldown of 5s. Assuming you have enough crits to proc it every 5s it heals for ~90hp/s. Basically a sigil is better in most situations than 2 of our traits combined. Mango pie gives 88hp/s, again a food is better than 2 traits. But! It gets better!

Omnomberry Pie! 66% chance on crit to proc a 325hp heal, NO COOLDOWN. Plus 70 precision on top of it!

Moral of the story? get Omnomberry pie, Omnoberry ghost, or if you want to be cheap Mixed berry pie. Put your trait points into something more useful, unless of course you want the stuff in that line. You could combine the traits+sigil+food for an even better heal build, but again it’s not going to be enough for PvP and you don’t get a ton of chances in dungeons/fractals to melee stuff.

Thanks all of you for really helpful answers

Life siphon + vampiric traits + omnomberry pie + sigil works alright with high crit chance. Executing dagger auto attack, with each hit a critical, can give me around 600 health from omnomberry, 450 from the sigil, and around 400 from the traits. That’s nearly 1500 health from an attack that takes around 1 second to execute.

Life Siphon can give well over 3000 health.

So it can be pretty good, but you have to go all the way. Don’t forget that you can get regen from staff and focus.

What you mean about going all the way? Full healing power build? If not:

How about full magi’s armor and accessory set? Healing power, vitality and precision.

Traits would be 10 in power, 30 in precision and 30 in healing.

DarkDream.3012:

What you mean about going all the way? Full healing power build? If not:

How about full magi’s armor and accessory set? Healing power, vitality and precision.

Healing power does not affect it at all. That’s why it works even for a power build, you don’t have to sacrifice any power to healing while having some form of damage mitigation/regen.

Going all the way means taking advantage of all the possibilites, meaning the food buffs, sigils and traits. Otherwise it won’t be all that effective. Once you start adding them all up, it gets better. It’s not a life saver even now but allows you to absorb damage from less hard hitting mobs without having to pay too much attention.

For example in WvW I don’t enjoy having to worry about bunker builds causing damage over time.

TheGreatA.4192:

DarkDream.3012:

What you mean about going all the way? Full healing power build? If not:

How about full magi’s armor and accessory set? Healing power, vitality and precision.

Healing power does not affect it at all. That’s why it works even for a power build, you don’t have to sacrifice any power to healing while having some form of damage mitigation/regen.

Going all the way means taking advantage of all the possibilites, meaning the food buffs, sigils and traits. Otherwise it won’t be all that effective. Once you start adding them all up, it gets better. It’s not a life saver even now but allows you to absorb damage from less hard hitting mobs without having to pay too much attention.

For example in WvW I don’t enjoy having to worry about bunker builds causing damage over time.

Thats great! So I can focus on precision and something else on my builds. So health siphoning is static – its a set value – not reliant on healing power or on damage at all, right?

Sigils of Life, Blood and Restoration best to use?

I guess gw2 wiki is useful:

Does not actually “steal” health. Does not deal any additional damage, and the amount healed is not dependent on damage dealt. It is possible to heal more health than the actual damage inflicted. Life stealing triggered by Sigil of Superior Leeching heals for 975 health at Lvl 80. Life stealing triggered by projectile finished combos heals for 202 health + 0.1 per Healing Power at level 80. Life stealing triggered by whirl finished combos heals for 170 health + 0.05 per Healing Power at level 80, for each bolt. Siphon Health from Vampiric is capped at 25 base, it gets to 38 with Bloodthirst. It doesn’t scale with power or healing power. Siphon Health from Vampiric Precision heals for 31, it goes to 51 with Bloodthirst. It doesn’t scale with power or healing power. Siphon Health from Vampiric Rituals heals for 42, isn’t effected by Bloodthirst and it doesn’t scale with power or healing power. Life Siphon heals for 202 per tick at Lvl 80, and increases by 1 per 25 Healing Power (approx.)