Guild Wars 2

This thread not only is intended to share ideas, but also generate discussion for the next But of Corpse podcast (May 25, 2014)

As has been brought up time and time again, Necro sustain is sadly in a pretty poor place, despite being designed as an “attrition” profession. There are a few reasons why:

1. Virtually no tactical attack negation. Necros have two dodges and that’s it for being able to tactically negate attacks. Death Shroud will prevent our actual health from being harmed, but we still suffer the full effects of the attack. Blinds, the only other method Necros have, are all either strategic use (Well of Darkness, Plague) due to pulsing nature and long cooldowns, or incidental (Deathly Swarm, Signet of Spite, Haunt, blast finishers in Dark Field) due to slow travel/cast times. If there are three “you really should avoid this” attacks, necros are boned.

2. Virtually no defense against multiple foes. All of a necro’s defenive utilities (outside of Well of Darkness, which has its own weaknesses) are hindered by ICD’s, ensuring that enemies beyond the first realistically see no difference at all in their attacks. Death Shroud, our primary defense, has its effectiveness divided by number of opponents.

3. Virtually all sustain coming solely from death shroud. This is an interesting one that will take a bit of explaining. Personally, I feel life force generation is pretty close to as high as it should be right now for great sustain. The issue comes in that our self-healing ability is terrible. We have two pools, but only one is easily and consistently replenishable. This actually makes us weak to attrition, as damage done to our real health sticks around, especially if we’re hiding in death shroud as much as possible (since we can’t be healed) The mechanic to make us strong in attrition fights actually ends up making us weak to them as the important pool keeps getting worn down without a good way to replenish it.

4. Virtually all sustain necros do have comes from attacking our foes. Combined with point 1 and poor stability access, it means CC shuts us down ridiculously hard compared to other professions.

These 4 points, at least to me, sum up the current largest issues with Necros and sustain.
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Now, there are a few ways to solve these issues. ANet has already said that necros will not be getting evades, blocks, invulnerabilities, etc. Fine. There are other ways to improve necro sustain. Most obvious? Blinds. Necros need tactical blinds if they aren’t getting the rest. Unfortunately, this would require brand new skills or traits. On the positive side, giving us more blinds would make Chilling Darkness much better. On the downside, Chilling Darkness also means, for example, we won’t get blinds on auto-attack (Ranger Greatsword has evades on the auto for precedent, but high chill uptime should not come via auto-attacks).

What I feel is the place to really address is points 3 and 4. If those were brought up, you would still be advised to dodge that Eviscerate, but if you don’t, it’s not the end of the world.

Now, when it comes to dealing with CC, there are two ways to look at it. One: we need better ways to ignore CC. Many suggest better Stability access (which I wouldn’t mind). I’d personally love to see a new trait that gave us one stack of Defiant for 5 seconds on a successful stun break (remember: Unshakeable is the buff that reduces some conditions to nil and creates Defiant stacks. Call the trait “Deathly Resilience” or something). Still requires actions and decisions from the necro, but gives a method of breaking CC chains. The second way is to turn it into an actual method to counterplay a necro instead of guaranteeing a kill. If the “sustain via attacking” was high enough to recover after a CC chain, then necros would retain their current weakness to CC, but it’s no longer a “CC the necro for free kill” but rather “CC the necro so we can kill him.”

I’m a fan of the second one. It really fits the Aggression school of thought.

However, what necros need above all else is good self-healing. Since our defense is to “take it like a man”, we need ways to keep “taking it like a man.” Arguably, necros should be the best self-healers in the game. Right now, we’re the worst. Here are my current suggestions:
Signet of the Locust:
Cooldown: 30 seconds
Base heal per hit: 1398
So right away, a massive buff to a skill. Signet of the Locust was already intended to be a sustain skill on the active, but currently, the active is too weak and the cooldown too long for it to make any real impact. I suggest slashing the cooldown in half and boosting the base heal value by 50%. Scaling is unchanged. With only the 100 healing power from Blood Magic and Bloodthirst, this becomes a heal of 1706.4 per target hit on a 30 second cooldown. It can potentially pull in 7532 health for the necro if he has 5 enemies in range, but that requires having 5 enemies within 480 range. The skill can still be blocked, blinded, or dodged to deny the necro healing, so counterplay exists. It would be strongest in teamfight settings (when necros are weakest on defense) and when fighting AI builds (MM, mesmers, spirit rangers, etc.), but still not insurmountable in those circumstances. It also gives necros more reason to take the signet as the active is worth using.

Feast of Corruption
Removed: bonus damage per condition
Added: ~200(+0.1*Healing Power) healing per condition on the target.
This idea actually came from the recent But of Corpse podcast, and I really liked it. All I did was think up numbers that sounded reasonable, keeping in mind this is a 10 second cooldown. Since it is the only “sustain” skill on Scepter/Dagger, it made sense to reinforce that role, especially as its current functionality is an odd fit on the weapon. In addition, it’s drawing a bit of inspiration from main-hand dagger. Both main-hand dagger and Staff have a method of regaining health on them. I feel it would be good if every necro main-hand had such a method.

Rending Claws
Removed: Vulnerability on second strike
Changed: First strike applies 2 stacks of Vulnerability for 7 seconds.
Added: Second strike siphons 100 (+0.05* Healing Power) health. Damage for the second strike is adjusted to effectively convert part of it to siphon damage.

And here is my suggestion for main-hand Axe. It maintains the vulnerability stacking ability of the skill, but it also makes you feel a lot better as you’re waiting for your other cooldowns, since it replenishes your health some.

All siphoning traits
Increase scaling with Healing Power to match that of Vampiric Master.
Should be self-explanatory. Investment should be rewarded. As an aside, has anyone figured out exactly what the healing power scaling is on Vampiric Master? Calculating from 1097 healing power, you get .017, but from just 200 healing power, the scaling is .02. From 300 healing power, the scaling is .016666.

These are some of my thoughts on improving necro sustain. What are yours?

I much prefer the damage bonus on feast on corruption. .. kinda kills my hybrid build making every weapon siphon doesnt really seem like a huge impact id rather see some buffed then add siphon.
SoL thats a much needed boost but 1300 seems to high.

alamore.1974:

I much prefer the damage bonus on feast on corruption. .. kinda kills my hybrid build making every weapon siphon doesnt really seem like a huge impact id rather see some buffed then add siphon.
SoL thats a much needed boost but 1300 seems to high.

Compare it to other non-6 skills/traits that heal. Life Siphon heals for 1818 base on a 12 second cooldown. Empower heals for 1500 (1.0 healing power scaling) in an AoE on a 20 second cooldown. Faithful Strike heals for 463 (AoE) as part of an auto-attack chain. Geyser heals the area for 2424 on a 20 second cooldown. Cleansing Wave heals for 1302 AoE on a 40 second cooldown and cures a condition.

Healing for 1300 per enemy struck on a 30 second cooldown is well in line with other non-healing skill efficiency.

DS used to suck up a hit of any size, allowing it to be used as a ‘block’. They said they removed this to stop the ‘drop necro’. But Spect Walk allows us to still drop any distance without taking damage.

Grand Master that gives stability in DS, used to be perm while DS was up. It’s now sooo short, that 1 ‘knockback’ (That go’s thru stability anyway) totally counters this.

Other huge ‘whamy’ for necros, is we need to attack to build defense. So CC hits us twice as hard.

I’m all for ‘doing it a different way’. But soo much in PvE totally ignores Snare/Slow/Chill/Blind. (Even more likely from boss types where you need it most)

Oh and no heals in DS + DS looks like our life is going down in party UI. Meaning support get’s frustrated as they waste heals we don’t take. If we use DS defensively after a big damage burst, were left with our very low life, till DS ends and the rest of the party has healed up, simply delaying the pain.

(Oh and sort of, our combo finishers/lack of them in time of need.)

Drop necros were too OP for Anet.

1.) Im actually fine with just 2 dodges being here if we get proper wifesteal effects.

2.) All that needs to be done here is your suggestion (to i would make it 940+0.15Hp siphoning, thus making it damage enemies for the equal amount) and reversing Swalk to 3% LF pre hit without ICD that cannot be procced at the same time as Sarmor (so if 3 hits hit you while you got both Sarmor and Swalk up in the same second, you would get a total of 14% lifeforce, 8% from first hit and Sarmor trigger, second two from Swalk).

3.) As multiple people mentioned/said, FITG should be redone into stability in DS, BUT i would argue for a effect that just gives us immunity to control removal, not actual immunity to be interrupted (aka everything works like a daze, but doesnt stop cds from other skills, just cast ones), thus both giving counterplay, having a higher timing requirement, not making it cheezy (like 3s of stability pre 3s in DS), but functionally powerful enough AND by making it DS only, necros are still kinda weak to CC for about 40-70% of their uptime.

4) Aggression is the necros fine wine, the longer its there the better.
Honestly all they need to do in this format without major overhauls is increase the current tooltip values by 40 and make the skills actually do their tooltip values in damage and healing (e.g. my vamp setup says 44 damage and 39 healing, but its actually 42 damage and 36 healing), but make them mutually exclusive (except for well vampirism, thus being worth the master slot).

I agree with 1, 2, and 4, and generally with 3 except that I disagree about LF generation in every build; condi builds have absolutely awful LF generation right now. However with your proposed FoC change, not such a big deal.

Feast: love the idea, it still requires a lot of play from the Necromancer to get the stacks needed to get good healing, involves counterplay.

Signet: too strong, honestly. 7k potential heal (I realize this was thinking more along PvP lines, but in PvE/WvW this would be insanely strong and super easy to max out on). I would suggest just the CD drop, as the passive is also very useful and could help some issues.

Rending Claws: while the idea isn’t too bad, Axe honestly just needs a full rework on #1/2 skills, and until then I’m really hesistent to suggest any other changes. The weapon is simply never going to perform until the #2 skill becomes an actual ranged burst, and the #1 skill finds a useful niche.

Vampiric: Vampiric/Precision both need 1s ICDs with very significant healing increases both as a base and scaling, and Rituals needs a boost to at least scaling (remains the only way to do AoE procs).

There are deeper issues to sustain than just this, however, largely due to how our current condition application works. We need very common low duration access to poison, weakness, cripple, and chill. Its how MM works as a sustain build, and it needs to be transfered in some form to other builds.

Signet of the Locust thoughts were indeed regarding PvP. In PvE and WvW, necro sustain isn’t quite the issue. PvE is so easy sustain doesn’t really matter (sadly). WvW, you have lots of people peeling for you and group healing going on. Realistically speaking, the extra healing wouldn’t make much of a difference in those modes.

Andele.1306:

1.) Im actually fine with just 2 dodges being here if we get proper wifesteal effects.

He’s mister steal yo’ girl.

Bhawb.7408:

Vampiric: Vampiric/Precision both need 1s ICDs with very significant healing increases both as a base and scaling, and Rituals needs a boost to at least scaling (remains the only way to do AoE procs).

As all previous MMOs show, ICD skills on sustain are bad… very very bad… hell even here in GW2, it butchered the usage of Swalk.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Andele.1306:

1.) Im actually fine with just 2 dodges being here if we get proper wifesteal effects.

He’s mister steal yo’ girl.

ME!!!, MAD!? Hahahahaha… Quite likely~

Oh, but honestly thresh and cho from Lol show off how to properly do cc tanks which dont have direct counters, but do have counterplay, non heal utility and with mobility being their weakness.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Personally, I feel life force generation is pretty close to as high as it should be right now for great sustain.

Condi necros are still relatively subpar when it comes to replenishing life force. I wouldn’t mind a slight buff at all.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

In PvE and WvW, necro sustain isn’t quite the issue. PvE is so easy sustain doesn’t really matter (sadly). WvW, you have lots of people peeling for you and group healing going on. Realistically speaking, the extra healing wouldn’t make much of a difference in those modes.

Please do not make the mistake of reducing WvW to zerg mode, even on a T1 server this is a gross misrepresentation of the format. Attrition ability is hugely important for necros in WvW. Of course, if you never roam, you won’t notice – when the Babysitter Blob™ is around you’re almost always relatively safe. Large engagements provide a structured setup with healing ability offloaded to other classes (ele and guard primarily), but in small scale combat you see the exact same dynamics you would encounter in PvP. The longer the fight lasts, the larger your disadvantage. If the fight lasts long enough, you eventually run out of resources. Plus you share the same vulnerability to focus fire. Any half-decent roaming group will call a necro as their first target.

Where necros in WvW stand out is in terms of offensive output – primarily due to PvP-only bleed nerfs, 40% duration food, and the still slightly ridiculous perplexity runes. That, and condi necros also have decent sustain in zerg fights (ironically where you need it the least) because of Parasitic Contagion ramping up significantly in effectiveness under those circumstances.

Andele.1306:

As all previous MMOs show, ICD skills on sustain are bad… very very bad… hell even here in GW2, it butchered the usage of Swalk.

ICDs have a tendency to be bad on skills that are based on incoming damage. The vampiric traits are based on outgoing damage, which is why ICDs are appropriate. More than that, they’re hands down necessary if you ever want to balance those traits properly. As long as life stealing can trigger up to five times for each attack via AoE, balancing has to take that into account and the traits will remain relatively weak as a result. The whole idea behind an ICD is to limit the number of triggers per attack to one, regardless of circumstance. Then you can start buffing the traits without breaking them in situations where multiple targets are present.

We have ICDs on life stealing food and sigils for the exact same reason.

ManaCraft.5630:

The longer the fight lasts, the larger your disadvantage. If the fight lasts long enough, you eventually run out of resources. Plus you share the same vulnerability to focus fire. Any half-decent roaming group will call a necro as their first target.

Are we talking about condi meta build or attrition build ?

Where necros in WvW stand out is in terms of offensive output – primarily due to PvP-only bleed nerfs, 40% duration food, and the still slightly ridiculous perplexity runes. That, and condi necros also have decent sustain in zerg fights (ironically where you need it the least) because of Parasitic Contagion ramping up significantly in effectiveness under those circumstances.

In WvW we have way more space for our fights and that’s a big difference.

ManaCraft.5630:

Andele.1306:

As all previous MMOs show, ICD skills on sustain are bad… very very bad… hell even here in GW2, it butchered the usage of Swalk.

ICDs have a tendency to be bad on skills that are based on incoming damage. The vampiric traits are based on outgoing damage, which is why ICDs are appropriate. More than that, they’re hands down necessary if you ever want to balance those traits properly. As long as life stealing can trigger up to five times for each attack via AoE, balancing has to take that into account and the traits will remain relatively weak as a result. The whole idea behind an ICD is to limit the number of triggers per attack to one, regardless of circumstance. Then you can start buffing the traits without breaking them in situations where multiple targets are present.

We have ICDs on life stealing food and sigils for the exact same reason.

Non sequitur, offensive sustain (in comparison to defensive actives and passive regen) HAS to scale of enemies, its basic requirement is hitting enemies and unlike passive sustain doesnt have a 100% guarantee nor like defensive sustain/actives has a alerting change in gameplay/playstyle one can assume.

If balance does dictate one might take actions like taking a max potential heal from a skill (so for example Holy nova can heal a max of 8k healing, if you are the only person in the aoe, you get healed for 8k, if there is a friend, you get 4k each; if applied to damage can be, assuming base damage is 75, max damage pre target is +50, thus if a aoe hits 2 people, both take 63 damage, if there are 3 people they take 58, if there are 5 all take 55).
BUT applying internal cooldowns to reliable effects ALWAYS butchers its mechanic/intended purpose.
If vampiric skills plain turned into passive regen like adrenal healing or active heals like healing ripple, giving it a cooldown/tick timer is perfectly fine to since it has no reliance on the enemy.

Also no, we got ICDS on Blood and Strawberry because people which had good but active sustain already were able to ignore it and just spec into all out damage while having equal value sustain (tho in case of engie a bit lower) without a cost.
You would still need to forgo things like +50% crit chance or +10% damage to get this.

Andele.1306:

Non sequitur, offensive sustain (in comparison to defensive actives and passive regen) HAS to scale of enemies, its basic requirement is hitting enemies and unlike passive sustain doesnt have a 100% guarantee nor like defensive sustain/actives has a alerting change in gameplay/playstyle one can assume.

Offensive sustain requires the presence of at least one target. However, it does not necessarily have to scale with the number of targets – circumstance and design dictate whether that is desirable.

Andele.1306:

If balance does dictate one might take actions like taking a max potential heal from a skill (so for example Holy nova can heal a max of 8k healing, if you are the only person in the aoe, you get healed for 8k, if there is a friend, you get 4k each; if applied to damage can be, assuming base damage is 75, max damage pre target is +50, thus if a aoe hits 2 people, both take 63 damage, if there are 3 people they take 58, if there are 5 all take 55).

No idea what a “holy nova” is, but implementing a maximum cap on the amount of healing received won’t work very well in this case. Some weapons land many more hits over time than others by design, and unless you compensate for that you’re still stuck with a system that plays favorites. If you can control how often the vampiric traits proc, you can make them equally viable for all builds (every weapon set can manage one attack per second) and much more effective than they currently are since aggressive scaling with healing power becomes possible. If the number of procs depends on build-specific factors, you cannot.

My goal is for the vampiric traits to become 1) reliable regardless of circumstance and 2) build-agnostic. A one second ICD accomplishes that. I’m not sure how you think that “butchers the intended purpose” of them. I for one call it a win.

Necro and sustain…

That’s quite a difficult subject. The fact is that necromancers have different mechanism that may be some “sustain”.
We got acces to an almost perma regen (boon).
Siphon may be very hard to balance.
We got some acces to blind but we also have a very powerfull trait that is bound to blind.
We’ve got some trait that may be interesting (New GM XIIIth) but we can’t really use them because they don’t fit their position in trait lines or don’t have skill/trait that may support them.

Lastely we’ve got LF generation. This is really a tricky thing. While on land LF generation is really good, underwater it’s really insufficient. With DS alone, we are destroyed by a zerg but, let us cast spectral armor, locust swarm and go in DS and we can outheal almost any damage a Pug zerg can dish at us for almost 8 s (from my experience).
It’s not an invulnerability because any big hit will drop us out of DS. I think, more then anything else we need something to really suck up big hits. We can argue that blind are here for that but it isn’t. Our blind are mostly melee and are useless against aoe.

But what are our option?
Aegis? that doesn’t fit necromancer
A shield? Hell no!
A mechanism with our minions? That may be an idea
Vigor? I think I already know Anet answer here
Death shroud preventing 1 hit ko? I would love to see it again.

Why have icd on sustain sources when there is none on damage healing ones?
A lot of interesting ideas here, but what actually makes me sad is that quite a few of them are a proposed evolution and a fix to some broken skill we already have.
Dark path and spectral grasp…

i’m still really irritated that every class but us gets an escape method. yes i know we get fleshwurm, but that cast time :/
why not make dark path similar to thief’s SB#5?

ManaCraft.5630:

Andele.1306:

Non sequitur, offensive sustain (in comparison to defensive actives and passive regen) HAS to scale of enemies, its basic requirement is hitting enemies and unlike passive sustain doesnt have a 100% guarantee nor like defensive sustain/actives has a alerting change in gameplay/playstyle one can assume.

Offensive sustain requires the presence of at least one target. However, it does not necessarily have to scale with the number of targets – circumstance and design dictate whether that is desirable.

Andele.1306:

If balance does dictate one might take actions like taking a max potential heal from a skill (so for example Holy nova can heal a max of 8k healing, if you are the only person in the aoe, you get healed for 8k, if there is a friend, you get 4k each; if applied to damage can be, assuming base damage is 75, max damage pre target is +50, thus if a aoe hits 2 people, both take 63 damage, if there are 3 people they take 58, if there are 5 all take 55).

No idea what a “holy nova” is, but implementing a maximum cap on the amount of healing received won’t work very well in this case. Some weapons land many more hits over time than others by design, and unless you compensate for that you’re still stuck with a system that plays favorites. If you can control how often the vampiric traits proc, you can make them equally viable for all builds (every weapon set can manage one attack per second) and much more effective than they currently are since aggressive scaling with healing power becomes possible. If the number of procs depends on build-specific factors, you cannot.

My goal is for the vampiric traits to become 1) reliable regardless of circumstance and 2) build-agnostic. A one second ICD accomplishes that. I’m not sure how you think that “butchers the intended purpose” of them. I for one call it a win.

Im sorry if this offends you, but: Come back to suggest sustain fixes after you played at least 5 years of WoW (where the skill holy nova comes from, namely priests), a year of EQ and a unholy amount of D&D, you clearly aint fit with enought data nor experience to understand why putting cooldowns on offensive mechanics which rely on enemy input is a bad idea (here is a hint, it will require a high base number thus hampered more by heal reductions and prone to being a nubstomp, skilled enemies will be able to shut down such build way to easy and it still wont do anything in 1vx situations nor will its effects be a reasonable function in burst vs attrition fights unless the numbers are flat out op).

Seriously just compare and contrast old spectral walk to new spectral walk.

Andele.1306:

ManaCraft.5630:

Andele.1306:

Non sequitur, offensive sustain (in comparison to defensive actives and passive regen) HAS to scale of enemies, its basic requirement is hitting enemies and unlike passive sustain doesnt have a 100% guarantee nor like defensive sustain/actives has a alerting change in gameplay/playstyle one can assume.

Offensive sustain requires the presence of at least one target. However, it does not necessarily have to scale with the number of targets – circumstance and design dictate whether that is desirable.

Andele.1306:

If balance does dictate one might take actions like taking a max potential heal from a skill (so for example Holy nova can heal a max of 8k healing, if you are the only person in the aoe, you get healed for 8k, if there is a friend, you get 4k each; if applied to damage can be, assuming base damage is 75, max damage pre target is +50, thus if a aoe hits 2 people, both take 63 damage, if there are 3 people they take 58, if there are 5 all take 55).

No idea what a “holy nova” is, but implementing a maximum cap on the amount of healing received won’t work very well in this case. Some weapons land many more hits over time than others by design, and unless you compensate for that you’re still stuck with a system that plays favorites. If you can control how often the vampiric traits proc, you can make them equally viable for all builds (every weapon set can manage one attack per second) and much more effective than they currently are since aggressive scaling with healing power becomes possible. If the number of procs depends on build-specific factors, you cannot.

My goal is for the vampiric traits to become 1) reliable regardless of circumstance and 2) build-agnostic. A one second ICD accomplishes that. I’m not sure how you think that “butchers the intended purpose” of them. I for one call it a win.

Im sorry if this offends you, but: Come back to suggest sustain fixes after you played at least 5 years of WoW (where the skill holy nova comes from, namely priests), a year of EQ and a unholy amount of D&D, you clearly aint fit with enought data nor experience to understand why putting cooldowns on offensive mechanics which rely on enemy input is a bad idea (here is a hint, it will require a high base number thus hampered more by heal reductions and prone to being a nubstomp, skilled enemies will be able to shut down such build way to easy and it still wont do anything in 1vx situations nor will its effects be a reasonable function in burst vs attrition fights unless the numbers are flat out op).

Seriously just compare and contrast old spectral walk to new spectral walk.

or traits that didn’t make it out of CB stages to the traits we’re stuck with now. the traits that were removed before game launch were literally dracula status.

A few random suggestions:

- We should be able to get healed while in DS. This shouldnt be a trait, it should be by nature. Self heal only, we are in “our realm” basicly, so our stuff should take effect upon ourself. This alone should be a huge step for the sustain part since 3 out of 4 healing skills we have heal over time. It makes no sense to take them and forces us to prefer CC in every scenario because we get all of the heal in one swoop, then we can hide in ds for the cd to come back up.

-Siphon traits rebalance:
1 The base siphon amount should be improved in general
2 Dimishing return effect upon hitting multiple enemies with one skill
3 Siphons increase in potency the longer the necromancer stays in battle. This should be rather drastic. I think a 75% Increase of the base amounts, traitable to a max of 125% effectiveness.

This will make siphons a lot stronger in prolonged 1v1 or small scale battles, fits with the theme “the longer the fight, the stronger the necro”.

- The CC/ no stability problem could be fixed through death magic traits:
1 The trait dark armor now reads : gain 400 thougness and stability while channeling
2 Unholy sanctuary becomes the master minor trait
3 New grandmaster trait Spectral Being. Reduces damage taken while disabled. 100-50% health = 33% damage reduction, 50 – 25% health = 66% damage reduction, 25-0% = 100% damage reduction.

- Scepter skill #3 is now a channel with multiple hits ( much like some mobs in orr).

This would allow the necro on demand stability for all one handed weapon sets, in combination with the multi hit nature of those skills it would be a decent heal if traited for siphons and would generally give a bit of breathing room.

- Adding new interactions to the spite line
1 Master minor is changed to : Whener you corrupt or remove a boon you siphon life. (300 per boon, scales with healing power)
2 A new GM trait based around corrupting or removing boons. No idea what would fit currently

Giving this line a bit of more natural sustain and keeping the concept of the healing based minors.

- Adding new functionality to the curses line:
1 New grandmaster trait : necrotic poison: Poison you apply last 33% longer, you get healed for the amount of healing your poisons reduce.

This adds sustain to this line as well, giving a nice choice for sustain and additional pressure

Soul reaping:
1 Foot in the grave: Now applies stability while in DS
2 Healing blast: → Necrotic blast: Lifeblast explodes after hitting, siphoning life on the area of impact.

We are no guardians. Supporting through condition and boon control for allies is okay, just adding a situational heal for allies only is not okay.

Random ideas:

- Trait that grants a burst of damage and blindness around the necro upon entering and leaving ds (3s icd between enter and leaving burst) for blocking those big hits on demand

- Corrosive poison cloud: Increased radius by a lot, now destroys projectiles and prevents enemies from passing through its radius with gap closer or teleport skills (both if an enemy wants to jump in, as well as if an enemy attempts to jump out). Usefull for blocking certain “big hits”, providing team support and improves the “guy you cant get away from” theme. Would give this skill a reason to exist.

I think self heals that scale with amount of enemies is the way to go. Also more access to heal while in DS. I can somewhat understand that necro is blocked from heals while in DS but

- Regeneration boon which is a long term heal really should work while in DS. Necro has plenty of regeneration sources (staff #2, traits, focus) but none of them have synergy with DS.

- Parasitic bond should work while in DS since it is somewhat hard to control when the heal triggers.

- Life steal should work in while in DS. It requires trait investments in order to get any benefits from it, yet totally no synergy with our main class mechanic.

Signet of locust could use a buff I agree. Maybe start with small steps. Start value 1000 heal, scale up to 1600 with healing power 40 sec CD (32 with trait).

Andele.1306:

(it will require a high base number thus hampered more by heal reductions and prone to being a nubstomp, skilled enemies will be able to shut down such build way to easy and it still wont do anything in 1vx situations nor will its effects be a reasonable function in burst vs attrition fights unless the numbers are flat out op).

Seriously just compare and contrast old spectral walk to new spectral walk.

You assume too much.

Anyway, as to the points you raised, there are no healing reduction mechanics in GW2 that function the way you describe. We have poison, which is a percentage-based reduction that lasts a given duration. It will prevent the same amount of healing over time regardless of how many procs that healing is distributed over, namely 33%. There’s nothing about healing reduction in GW2 that prevents an ICD from doing its job properly.

Second, no one said anything about life siphons being applicable as a defense against burst damage or 1vX. In fact I have argued against that very point myself repeatedly in previous posts. You need different mechanics to deal with that problem, and I’ve given suggestions on how to accomplish that as well if you care to look. The purpose of life siphoning is to provide a steady influx of moderate healing over time – nothing more, nothing less. Focus fire is a separate problem, and requires separate solutions.

And lastly, I’m well aware of how spectral walk functions. I also explained to you why that argument is not applicable. Effects based on damage taken require different mechanics than effects based on damage dealt. The poster child of poor ICD implementation, by the way, is Signet of Vampirism – a perfect demonstration of why a skill that procs based on damage taken seizes to function properly when an ICD is applied. Effects such as the vampiric traits, however, have no problem functioning under an ICD. It makes no difference whether you siphon, say, 150 hp from one proc per second or 30 hp from five procs per second – the former is simply easier to balance, especially when scaling is involved.

1) Increase life force generation on condition weapons by adding LF generation to Scepter 1

2) EITHER give Death Shroud 5s Stability as standard OR 2 stacks of Defiant OR Death Shroud now regens health as standard the healing INCREASES the longer you can stay in. The first and second one stop us being continuously focused to be knocked around without making us op. The third should be similar to the gm trait but with a noteable heal buff and and an incremental heal buff every second. I see no reason why we cant at least pop DS and get some self heals..maybe getting us back to half. Of course this option makes it even more important to focus the necro.

3) Life force generating elite on a 60 second cooldown with perhaps a few seconds of stability?

4) Dark Path speed increased by 50%

5) Fear now has a unique animation where afflicted warriors and thieves leave little wet puddles tailing behind them.

ManaCraft.5630:

You assume too much.

Look i cant bother kittening around with someone who has bloody little to noone mmo history who actually does the assumptions, I KNOW FORM EXAMPLES, which trough 5 (7 if you count side scrolling) MMORPGs that icds on offensive sustain, no matter what kind, dont work.

Andele.1306:

Look i cant bother kittening around with someone who has bloody little to noone mmo history who actually does the assumptions, I KNOW FORM EXAMPLES, which trough 5 (7 if you count side scrolling) MMORPGs that icds on offensive sustain, no matter what kind, dont work.

And yet MM, the only build we have that works with sustain, effectively has an ICD on its vamp trait.

Bhawb.7408:

Andele.1306:

Look i cant bother kittening around with someone who has bloody little to noone mmo history who actually does the assumptions, I KNOW FORM EXAMPLES, which trough 5 (7 if you count side scrolling) MMORPGs that icds on offensive sustain, no matter what kind, dont work.

And yet MM, the only build we have that works with sustain, effectively has an ICD on its vamp trait.

Difference is, its not functionally offensive, as in it doesnt rely on your or the enemy input, it relies on ai (and a overwhelming amount of it if i may add).
In terms of actual gameplay function a MM necro might as well just get adrenal healing and heal signet passive in terms of reliability.

Tho it does fall under the first requirement of sustain with ICDS, with both Blood Fiend (which is 40-50% of the MMs sustain) being a weaker heal sig and Vamp Master being 60% stronger in both offense and defense (and unlike vampic and VP which need such a boost) with average 5 minions out to push the hits that is quite the competitive amount of sustain just from those traits without any bonuses.

THO It does prove my claim of ICDS ruining stuff, imagine now if you couldnt do mini heal bursts using bone minions and golem~

It affects very little without the bursts, because they rely on multi-hits. Bone Minions in sPvP 1v1s will generally only hit 1, and flesh golem will also only get a few hits (without bugging, it is only 3-5 ticks, which isn’t a whole lot compared to the amount of hits he loses by flying so far away from the target). So the bursts only actually help in AoE situations, where your minions are losing out on procs anyway.

In this game, ICDs are absolutely necessary on vampiric and vampiric precision. ANet cannot make them meaningful in realistic situations as long as you can have situations where you are procing 50+ siphons per second.

Andele.1306:

Look i cant bother kittening around with someone who has bloody little to noone mmo history who actually does the assumptions, I KNOW FORM EXAMPLES, which trough 5 (7 if you count side scrolling) MMORPGs that icds on offensive sustain, no matter what kind, dont work.

If that’s how you feel we’ll table the discussion – it seems to be taking a personal turn anyway.

Bhawb.7408:

It affects very little without the bursts, because they rely on multi-hits. Bone Minions in sPvP 1v1s will generally only hit 1, and flesh golem will also only get a few hits (without bugging, it is only 3-5 ticks, which isn’t a whole lot compared to the amount of hits he loses by flying so far away from the target). So the bursts only actually help in AoE situations, where your minions are losing out on procs anyway.

In this game, ICDs are absolutely necessary on vampiric and vampiric precision. ANet cannot make them meaningful in realistic situations as long as you can have situations where you are procing 50+ siphons per second.

Except that Spectral skills, Projectile finishers, Signet of Restoration
Signet of Restorationand Signet of Malice AND every single regen in game prove that it aint true.
While signet of vampirism, spectral skills, the nerfed evasive arcana, etc all show why ICDs butcher said sustain builds (even if they arent offensive, tho some were required).

And again, they will never be meaningful when you can proc them 50 times per second.

Also, Spectral Armor is an amazing skill that is by far our best defensive skill and can nullify burst on its own. It just isn’t used in PvP because if you’re in a situation where you’d die without it, you’ll just die after its over.

How well does Parasitic Contagion work with 6 blood magic Vampiric Rituals or Unholy Martyr? I haven’t had the chance to fully investigate it yet, but perhaps some of you have.

Malcastus.6240:

How well does Parasitic Contagion work with 6 blood magic Vampiric Rituals or Unholy Martyr? I haven’t had the chance to fully investigate it yet, but perhaps some of you have.

Parasitic Contagion is primarily flawed in that if you are actually getting a meaningful bit of healing back, you’re probably going to win the fight anyway, and if you really need the healing you will be unable to put out that kind of pressure.

I see. Butin combination with other life steal abilities it still isn’t of use? I mean, you could use Leeching sigl and Runes of Vampirism for better results. Would it still be futile?

Malcastus.6240:

I see. Butin combination with other life steal abilities it still isn’t of use? I mean, you could use Leeching sigl and Runes of Vampirism for better results. Would it still be futile?

Unlike other traits, this one is completely dependent on the amount of damage you do. For a full 6 points in a tree that otherwise doesn’t increase your sustain noticeably, it just doesn’t do enough on your own. You could use all those things you listed with the 6 traits in a much tankier setup and see way better returns (a la MM).

I disagree that ICD’s are necessary to balance siphons at all. It’s simple enough to choose a target number for siphon/second and get an expected number of procs per second against a single target.

Those last few words are very important. If there are multiple targets, it means more incoming damage, thus, more siphoning is required to sustain. The beauty of generic “on hit” effects with no ICD is that they naturally scale with what you’re fighting.

I am actually going to ammend my siphon suggestion in the OP. My proposed values are as follows:
All siphoning traits: scaling with healing power increased to 2%
Base heal values:
Vampiric Precision: 88
Vampiric: 35
Vampiric Master: As-is (with improved scaling)
Vampiric Rituals: 80

My target average number was 300 siphoned health per second from a single target wearing a PVP celestial amulet (above average healing power, but not dedicated). On average, a necro dedicated to hitting as fast as possible will probably net around 3 hits/second. Figuring 50% crit chance for Vampiric Precision, although more accurate values would be around 45%.

Here is my reasoning behind those numbers.
1. Vampiric didn’t get much of a change because of its position as a minor trait as well as the overall lack of investment needed to use it. It’s a kicker for those builds going into Blood Magic, but not focusing on siphoning.

2. Vampiric Precision got a massive buff. The reason is twofold: one, it requires heavy investment into Precision as well as Healing power to make it work at peak efficiency, two, the only other option for sustained siphoning, Vampiric Master, is typically not used in builds with high precision. Critical hits are always rarer than “hits,” and this trait helps pick up the slack to reach the target 300.

3. Vampiric Master does not need much of a buff. Assuming ~3 hits/second from a full compliment of minions, it plus Vampiric are close to meeting that target number. The improved scaling alone will do it.

4. Vampiric Rituals is a funky one. Due to the nature of wells, it operates more as a “burst siphon” trait. Combined with its Grandmaster status, and this trait needs to pack a punch. Since it is realistically mutually exclusive to Vampiric Master for effectiveness, the two can be balanced almost completely independent of one another.

Once multiple opponents start getting hit by the necro’s attacks, the natural increase in siphon effectiveness will help offset the increased damage, even if it is incidental AoE instead of focused on the necro.

So, corner cases:
A MM picks up Vampiric Precison instead of Transfusion, Mark of Evasion, or Bloodthirst. This means the necro must invest into a Precision amulet, meaning he gives up overall survivability and/or damage. In addition, his ability to heal his minions is greatly reduced. If he attempts to take Vampiric Precision and Transfusion, then he gives up Vampiric Master (problem solved) or Fetid Consumption (the whole reason to go 6 in Blood as a MM) for more sustain. Even so, his siphons would hit ~450 healing per second and only if the target wasn’t evading/blocking/invulnerable. Even stealth would drastically reduce his siphons as the minions all stop attacking.

I honestly can’t think of other corner cases that might get problematic, but it’s just after midnight here as I post this. Worst that happens that I can see? We start seeing Magi’s necros (lol) or Celestial necros (more build variety!)

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I disagree that ICD’s are necessary to balance siphons at all. It’s simple enough to choose a target number for siphon/second and get an expected number of procs per second against a single target.

Those last few words are very important. If there are multiple targets, it means more incoming damage, thus, more siphoning is required to sustain. The beauty of generic “on hit” effects with no ICD is that they naturally scale with what you’re fighting.

I am actually going to ammend my siphon suggestion in the OP. My proposed values are as follows:
All siphoning traits: scaling with healing power increased to 2%
Base heal values:
Vampiric Precision: 88
Vampiric: 35
Vampiric Master: As-is (with improved scaling)
Vampiric Rituals: 80

My target average number was 300 siphoned health per second from a single target wearing a PVP celestial amulet (above average healing power, but not dedicated). On average, a necro dedicated to hitting as fast as possible will probably net around 3 hits/second. Figuring 50% crit chance for Vampiric Precision, although more accurate values would be around 45%.

Here is my reasoning behind those numbers.
1. Vampiric didn’t get much of a change because of its position as a minor trait as well as the overall lack of investment needed to use it. It’s a kicker for those builds going into Blood Magic, but not focusing on siphoning.

2. Vampiric Precision got a massive buff. The reason is twofold: one, it requires heavy investment into Precision as well as Healing power to make it work at peak efficiency, two, the only other option for sustained siphoning, Vampiric Master, is typically not used in builds with high precision. Critical hits are always rarer than “hits,” and this trait helps pick up the slack to reach the target 300.

3. Vampiric Master does not need much of a buff. Assuming ~3 hits/second from a full compliment of minions, it plus Vampiric are close to meeting that target number. The improved scaling alone will do it.

4. Vampiric Rituals is a funky one. Due to the nature of wells, it operates more as a “burst siphon” trait. Combined with its Grandmaster status, and this trait needs to pack a punch. Since it is realistically mutually exclusive to Vampiric Master for effectiveness, the two can be balanced almost completely independent of one another.

Once multiple opponents start getting hit by the necro’s attacks, the natural increase in siphon effectiveness will help offset the increased damage, even if it is incidental AoE instead of focused on the necro.

So, corner cases:
A MM picks up Vampiric Precison instead of Transfusion, Mark of Evasion, or Bloodthirst. This means the necro must invest into a Precision amulet, meaning he gives up overall survivability and/or damage. In addition, his ability to heal his minions is greatly reduced. If he attempts to take Vampiric Precision and Transfusion, then he gives up Vampiric Master (problem solved) or Fetid Consumption (the whole reason to go 6 in Blood as a MM) for more sustain. Even so, his siphons would hit ~450 healing per second and only if the target wasn’t evading/blocking/invulnerable. Even stealth would drastically reduce his siphons as the minions all stop attacking.

I honestly can’t think of other corner cases that might get problematic, but it’s just after midnight here as I post this. Worst that happens that I can see? We start seeing Magi’s necros (lol) or Celestial necros (more build variety!)

You know you just made not only zealots the only build necros will be able to go, but also buffed the minions zerker for pvp to all hell.

Andele.1306:

You know you just made not only zealots the only build necros will be able to go, but also buffed the minions zerker for pvp to all hell.

Zerker MM is just a cheese build, its not remotely good unless your enemy allows you to run all over them.

Cant beleive im saying this.but bhawb is right MM necros. Are easy to counter and kill

Andele.1306:

You know you just made not only zealots the only build necros will be able to go, but also buffed the minions zerker for pvp to all hell.

These changes would make Zealot’s a build to go, not “the” build. It wouldn’t be very different than healing signet Zerker warrior in healing, except less armor and less damage.

With the buff to Vampiric Precision, though, it might want to get moved to Master tier (Quickening Thirst could get moved down). That would even solve the issue of MM builds nabbing it and getting possibly too much sustain.

@alamore: Bhawb knows a few things about MM.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

If there are multiple targets, it means more incoming damage, thus, more siphoning is required to sustain.

The problem with that assumption is that it just doesn’t hold in all game modes. There are plenty of occasions where multiple targets are present but the necromancer isn’t taking damage from all (or even any) of them – especially outside of organized PvP. You’re then left with the dilemma of either 1) keeping the numbers low enough that they won’t be a problem against multiple targets, in which case they’ll become ineffective against single targets, or 2) buffing the numbers enough that they are relevant vs single targets but overpowered against multiple targets unless some/all of them attack the necro at once.

There’s a third option as well of course, which is trying to find a middle ground that never behaves completely satisfactory in either scenario but doesn’t break the traits too much either – which seems to be what you’re shooting for. But where that system attempts to balance itself on a knife’s edge, an ICD eliminates the knife entirely. That’s not to say you couldn’t get away with what you’re suggesting – in fact, given a.net’s previous small buffs to the vampiric traits there’s at least some evidence that this is precisely what they’ve tried to accomplish in the past – but it’s not as easily balanced or even as elegant as an ICD would be. You’re also going to have problems with encouraging investment in healing power (the better scaling you offer, the higher the numbers become and the system will eventually tilt). Two percent just isn’t enough scaling to encourage investment in gear with healing power on it.

Anet hasn’t been able to balance life siphon for 10 years, they should just scrap it & replace with something boon related.

Let Vampiric Rituals be the AoE option (like I’ve said a billion times), where it has no ICD. It doesn’t need one because it is innately gated by the CD of wells and their ticking speed, meaning you can either choose to drop a bunch of wells to try to burst heal yourself up, or you can drop them over time to slowly keep yourself topped off. But just like minions are gated by their attack speed and uptime, wells are affected by essentially the same thing.

This way if you want AoE healing, you go wells, and you are rewarded for hitting people with wells. But Vampiric/Vampiric Precision will never be balanced for 1v1 when the numbers need to be balanced for hitting 5 targets with craploads of AoE. An ICD is the way to fix this, and then allowing things like Vampiric Rituals to cover AoE siphoning for you.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Andele.1306:

You know you just made not only zealots the only build necros will be able to go, but also buffed the minions zerker for pvp to all hell.

These changes would make Zealot’s a build to go, not “the” build. It wouldn’t be very different than healing signet Zerker warrior in healing, except less armor and less damage.

With the buff to Vampiric Precision, though, it might want to get moved to Master tier (Quickening Thirst could get moved down). That would even solve the issue of MM builds nabbing it and getting possibly too much sustain.

@alamore: Bhawb knows a few things about MM.

Well it would for wvwvw and fractal necro in most cases, maybe with a mix of clerics.
Vamp skills cannot be left as a stacking option, balancing them on playstyle (so vampiric as like a 70 base on power build for normal hits, vamp master with its current 80 pre minion and VP moved to master and with around 90~100 pre crit) would allow both for better control and easier to control if a specific build goes op.

Bhawb.7408:

Let Vampiric Rituals be the AoE option (like I’ve said a billion times), where it has no ICD. It doesn’t need one because it is innately gated by the CD of wells and their ticking speed, meaning you can either choose to drop a bunch of wells to try to burst heal yourself up, or you can drop them over time to slowly keep yourself topped off. But just like minions are gated by their attack speed and uptime, wells are affected by essentially the same thing.

This way if you want AoE healing, you go wells, and you are rewarded for hitting people with wells. But Vampiric/Vampiric Precision will never be balanced for 1v1 when the numbers need to be balanced for hitting 5 targets with craploads of AoE. An ICD is the way to fix this, and then allowing things like Vampiric Rituals to cover AoE siphoning for you.

Bhawb, I don’t think you get it. If the numbers are balanced for 1v1 with no ICD, they will naturally scale against multiple opponents to an appropriate value.

The key is to balance them for that 1v1 not the hypothetical “1vX, but only 1 of X is attacking you” situation that doesn’t actually happen.

Even if it’s a 2v2 melee brawl, but each person is only focusing one target, the siphoning from AOE is not out of line. Rapid AoE hits are done via Locust Swarm and wells, both of which are PBAoE. If you’re hitting someone with them, they’re easily in range to hit you right back. Given most melee weapons have cleave, you’re effectively doing incidental siphoning that offsets incidental cleave.

Going off of my figures that I calculated the numbers with above (average of 3 hits/second, 50% crit chance), each additional enemy in range actually adds about 1 hit/second and .5 crits per second. This is a case where a necro’s lack of cleave makes true balancing easier.

So, the target number I had above was 300 siphoned health/second with Celestial-level healing power (which, incidentally, actually means my suggested values are still too low to meet target as 50% crit chance is impossible with Celestial gear). This total from Vampiric and Vampiric Precision (Vampiric Master doesn’t scale with numbers of opponents) is assuming 3 hits, 1.5 crits per second (actual crit rate is likely lower) against a single target. Because most of a necro’s AoE is not rapid-hits, their impact on siphons are lower. However, assuming wells/Locust Swarm, we’d hit an average of 3 hits/second, only one hit being AoE.

When a second foe gets in range, we jump to 4 hits, 2 crits per second. A third foe makes five hits, 2.5 crits. 4 foes, is 6 hits, 3 crits, and 5 (the max) is 7 hits, 3.5 crits.

If you somehow have five enemies in range of Locust Swarm, but only one of them is hitting you, then the issue isn’t with siphon values. The issue is with moronic opponents.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

…

Except in a 1v1, it is known the enemy is attacking you. Therefore your healing is directly helping to counter one person’s damage. Let’s assume it is balanced that your siphoning is sufficient to help out in a 1v1 where you have 1 person attacking, leaving aside rangers/mesmers/any summon build. When you take that balanced 1v1 siphoning to an XvX, the amount of incoming damage does not scale linearly like your siphoning will. You either take severely reduced damage (PvE/WvW) or it varies from nothing to far more (sPvP). When you have 5v5, the opponents do not deal all of their damage to you, they don’t even evenly split it up so that its just like 5 1v1s at once. If things scaled as nicely as that there would never have been an issue in the first place.

Siphoning is already really strong in situations like WvW where you can proc it at its maximum potential. But they will never be able to balance an offensive siphon to properly scale as a defensive mechanic if they keep it as it is. The game does not line up prettily enough to do that.

The 2 big problems with siphoning in my eyes are:

They need some kind of soft ICD, or dimishing returns. It should be a lot stronger than it is now in 1v1s, as its not nearly as reliable as passive healing skills. Given the fact how easily the necromancer is shut down during long periodes of the fight due to no stability and the DS mechanic as well as the blocks and invulnerability and stealth and escape potential of the other classes we can maybe make good use of the traits in maybe 25 – 40% of the time of a battle, in such a low timeframe it needs to heal much more to be useable. Its easily countered by the enemy, it needs high base amounts, and dimishing returns for team battles in one way or another. Either give it a max “pool” based on healingpower, limit the maximum possible amount of siphoning within 3 seconds to X, where X should be higher then achieveable in a 1 vs 1 scenario, or reduce the amount of siphon for multi target skills. Lets say mark of blood hits the “initial target” for the full amount, and every additional target for 40% of base amount. This would keep it strong in 1v1, as those traits are supposed, and at a reasonable powerlevel in massive hit scenarios.

The only reason why siphoning as sustain work for a MM is the fact that you cant be shut down that easily of your sustained heal. The minions keep on attacking, even if you dodge, kite or are in CC. As well as the “tankyness” of this build, for skills like vampiric precision you need a high crit % to make it worthwhile, thus limiting your tankyness, so it does not fit in a positive way like it does for a MM.

With such an soft ICD or dimishing returns effect also skills like Spite XIII could be balanced and brought in line, as it currently is its subpar in 1V1 fights, and quite strong in big fights, but that doenst change much as in big fights, if you get focused, you are dead no matter how much conditions you spread, and in 1v1 fights its not worthwhile for the heal because you get more out of the other grandmaster traits.

Brujeria.7536:

Either give it a max “pool” based on healingpower, limit the maximum possible amount of siphoning within 3 seconds to X, where X should be higher then achieveable in a 1 vs 1 scenario, or reduce the amount of siphon for multi target skills. Lets say mark of blood hits the “initial target” for the full amount, and every additional target for 40% of base amount. This would keep it strong in 1v1, as those traits are supposed, and at a reasonable powerlevel in massive hit scenarios.

If the “massive hit scenarios" were limited to AoE only you would be correct. But even when facing only a single target there is still a large difference in how many hits are produced over time depending on the weapon you equip. Especially weapon sets with access to rapidly hitting channeled skills, like those on axe or mainhand dagger, will produce a significantly higher amount of hits over time. Heck, even having a faster or more reliable autoattack will become a factor in how much life you recoup. The bottom line is that even if you took care of AoEs with a soft cap or diminishing returns, you’d still be stuck with a system that plays favorites based on which weapon your build uses.

It’s not just AoEs, it’s anything that causes a significant difference in the amount of hits delivered over time.

ManaCraft.5630:

Brujeria.7536:

Either give it a max “pool” based on healingpower, limit the maximum possible amount of siphoning within 3 seconds to X, where X should be higher then achieveable in a 1 vs 1 scenario, or reduce the amount of siphon for multi target skills. Lets say mark of blood hits the “initial target” for the full amount, and every additional target for 40% of base amount. This would keep it strong in 1v1, as those traits are supposed, and at a reasonable powerlevel in massive hit scenarios.

If the “massive hit scenarios" were limited to AoE only you would be correct. But even when facing only a single target there is still a large difference in how many hits are produced over time depending on the weapon you equip. Especially weapon sets with access to rapidly hitting channeled skills, like those on axe or mainhand dagger, will produce a significantly higher amount of hits over time. Heck, even having a faster or more reliable autoattack will become a factor in how much life you recoup. The bottom line is that even if you took care of AoEs with a soft cap or diminishing returns, you’d still be stuck with a system that plays favorites based on which weapon your build uses.

It’s not just AoEs, it’s anything that causes a significant difference in the amount of hits delivered over time.

I dont think so, the amount of hits per second is limited by nature.

The 2 damaging wells as well as Warhorn 5 will produce up to 3 hits/second for a limited time, during this time you have to calculate the long cast time of locust swarm. Focus 4 provides 3 procs at max once. These options can be used by any one handed weapon set.

Axe and dagger are pretty similar in terms of hits, axe channel is faster, its auto attack while weak is more reliable and easy to use, #3 hits multiple targets. Dagger AA is superior in terms of speed and hits, but harder to maintain, also dagger #3 hits once with a long cast time, this is compensated by the base amount of siphon through 2.

Scepter for example has not so many hits, but has the potential of getting heal through spite XIII, if that should ever get to the same power level. It isnt strong in the hit sustain, but i think thats okay, not all weapons should be viable with the same traits, as long as we can get some sustain on every weapon if we wish to invest for it its fine.

Staff is more interesting, potentialy every skill can hit 5 people, most have long cooldowns and also potential for Spite XIII. Again, in 1v1 scenarios rather weak hit wise, but able to give perma regen, which compensates this a bit.

All of this is also further reduced by the enemy dodges, blinds, blocks, invulnerability, stealth.

Factoring all these together will give the necromancer maybe 2 hits per second in average, the massive hit scenarios can only occur in big fits, everything else is hindered by your enemies skills, long cooldowns, our vulnerability to CC and long casttimes. Plus if we use DS we completly ignore every siphons at the current state. So even if we could maintain 4 hits per second constantly, on every weapon set it will still be rather easy to balance in general, because this siphon depends so much more on the enemy skill then on ours.

As stated, we maybe able to profit of our siphons 30% of the total time spent in battle due to the above reasons, so we should be able to get at least the amount of passive sustain other classes get with the same investment during those time, if not more due to higher risk and higher reward. If reliable, passive sustain that cant be countered is that much stronger than offensive sustain like our siphons something is really wrong. Siphon deal damage, of course, but honestly, the amount is so small, nobody would ever trait into siphons for the damage.. its a nice added thing, but compared on how damage and heal amounts are distributed its really no factor at all.

Bhawb.7408:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

…

Except in a 1v1, it is known the enemy is attacking you. Therefore your healing is directly helping to counter one person’s damage. Let’s assume it is balanced that your siphoning is sufficient to help out in a 1v1 where you have 1 person attacking, leaving aside rangers/mesmers/any summon build. When you take that balanced 1v1 siphoning to an XvX, the amount of incoming damage does not scale linearly like your siphoning will. You either take severely reduced damage (PvE/WvW) or it varies from nothing to far more (sPvP). When you have 5v5, the opponents do not deal all of their damage to you, they don’t even evenly split it up so that its just like 5 1v1s at once. If things scaled as nicely as that there would never have been an issue in the first place.

Siphoning is already really strong in situations like WvW where you can proc it at its maximum potential. But they will never be able to balance an offensive siphon to properly scale as a defensive mechanic if they keep it as it is. The game does not line up prettily enough to do that.

And you’re conveniently ignoring that a necro proccing these traits rapidly will have very little in the way of AoE hits (typically only 1/second). Siphoning is, by its very nature, going to be a volatile form of sustain because it depends on landing hits. It could be completely negated (dodge, block, CC, etc.) or it can explode. The key is to balance at the “ideal” average, which is what I suggest and aim for with my suggested values. That is, using realistic possibilities to balance it. Using an ICD negates the possibility for it to explode, but it also butchers any possibility of it actually scaling with opponents at all and still does nothing to aid in the time when siphoning literally does nothing. In other words, giving it an ICD gives it an upper cap, but it does not make for a good mechanic. It would still be volatile, but only in a downward direction.

Your feared “well bombing” scenario can generate a lot of health very quickly, but then the necro has jack squat for the next 30 seconds or so and even then, it still won’t compare to the damage output of five enemies in melee range and it still can be easily negated. If you went for max siphon proccing, you are using weapons that put you in range of everything. If you have five opponents in melee range of you and only one is actually hurting you, the issue is with moronic opponents, not the natural ability of siphons to scale. In melee range, they would even just cleave you as they attack your buddy and neutralize that extra siphon.

This well-bombing scenario you bring up is a terribly weak argument and you know it. Someone specs heavily into siphoning, blows 4 cooldowns of 30+ seconds, and has a perfect 10 seconds of nobody leaving his chosen location, blocking, dodging, blinding, or anything else? The necro should get huge rewards for that because it is literally the absolute perfect situation. Even in PvE, though, this is tempered by that kind of output lighting up every mob’s aggro onto the necro.

But let’s say we run into a possible situation: Roaming siphoning necro runs into another single roamer (class doesn’t much matter).

The two duel for a bit and are apparently very evenly matched, or at least, neither one is in danger of dying soon.

Each one has an ally show up, roughly at the same time. How does the fight go from there?

With no ICD: The necro starts taking a bit more of a beating as AoE’s or cleave clip him, but he also gets a few extra siphon procs and helps to offset that damage.

With ICD: The necro starts taking a bit more of a beating as AoE’s or cleave clip him, but his siphoning was operating at maximum capacity against just one foe. Those clipping blows keep adding up and the necro falls much faster as a result.

All that giving siphons an ICD would do is break them. Either they will never be strong enough to help sustain against more than one target, or they get balanced for that and one opponent will never be able to break through. It’s the same issue we have with Death Shroud: an amount suitable for defense against 3 opponents would be immensely overbearing for one, and an amount balanced for one opponent is just a speed bump against three.

Not giving siphons an ICD lets them be balanced for that 1v1 situation, but still naturally scale with number of enemies. Those builds that could proc siphons fastest would naturally get the most health back, but the fast-hitting skills are mostly single-target and as such would not scale, even if multiple opponents were around, but not focusing the necro. Incidental siphons would help offset incidental AoE/cleave. An ICD would absolutely kill this possibility with no chance of redemption.

Brujeria.7536:

I dont think so, the amount of hits per second is limited by nature.

How? Dodges/blocks/invulns/etc don’t behave the way you describe. They merely act as short time-outs, after which the battle resumes. You still have to chew your way through the same amount of EHP. If anything, classes with high access to those mechanics will increase their EHP through heals coming off cooldowns more times the longer a fight takes, which only exacerbates whatever difference already existed between weapon sets.

As for turning parasitic contagion into a viable trait for small scale fights to offset the slower speeds on scepter/staff, we can agree that there are fundamentally two different ways of dealing with sustain. You can either have a build-agnostic option, or you can have enough options that there’s something for every build. That being said, if you want to make both the vampiric traits and parasitic contagion viable in small scale fights, you’re going to end up with a very powerful 6/x/x/3/x condi build, so you would have to deal with that somehow (a problem that is unavoidable to a certain extent anyway).

Brujeria.7536:

Factoring all these together will give the necromancer maybe 2 hits per second in average

Brujeria.7536:

As stated, we maybe able to profit of our siphons 30% of the total time spent in battle

I’m not sure where you get those numbers from (and at the risk of being a bit flippant, it sounds to me mostly like you’re pulling them out of a hat). Whatever the case, surely you must realize that they’re incredibly unreliable estimates that will vary to a great extent across different game modes. Don’t tell me you expect PvE mobs to somehow avoid 70% of all hits dished out by players?

Brujeria.7536:

If reliable, passive sustain that cant be countered is that much stronger than offensive sustain like our siphons something is really wrong. Siphon deal damage, of course, but honestly, the amount is so small, nobody would ever trait into siphons for the damage.. its a nice added thing, but compared on how damage and heal amounts are distributed its really no factor at all.

Agreed wholeheartedly on both points.