Guild Wars 2

JonathanSharp.7094:

Class balance:
[snip]…
Nec
The Blood line underwent some tweaks, as it’s something that Necromancer players often feel is a lacking trait line. Vampiric Precision, Vampiric Rituals, Vampiric Master have all seen improvements. (emphasis mine)

Testing conducted in Heart of the Mists against a Heavy Target Golem on 10-15-2013 @ 10:45 AM PDT. Healing Power = 303.

Vampiric

Before 10-15-2013 siphoned 25 per hit/38 when traiting Bloodthirst.

After 10-15-2013 siphons 32 per hit/40 when traiting Bloodthirst.

Vampiric Precision

Before 10-15-2013 siphoned 31 per hit/51 when traiting Bloodthirst.

After 10-15-2013 siphons 40 per hit/51 when traiting Bloodthirst.

Summary

Net effect for a non-minion siphoner traiting Bloodthirst, Vampiric, and Vampiric Precision? Two (2) extra points of life stealing as compared to pre-patch levels.

Comment

If ArenaNet doesn’t want to give us a viable vampire build, just come out and say so instead of hiding behind promises of improvements that never materialize.

I won’t even rant about it since the numbers speak for themselves. ArenaNet’s definition of “improvement” and my definition of “improvement” are universes apart is all I’ll add.

LoL still sounds better than giving us Attrition by removing the ability to use DS as a block, giving us burning & nurfing terror/bleeds, capping amount of life force gen from spectral, lowering/braking amount of condi’s we can deal with.
Or giving us ‘lock down other players’ by 3 stacks of torment, (Giving more stacks to the highly mobile thief)

I mean, other class’s only get 202 per hit, no trait cost… It’s at least ~1/4th now. ;-)

I think tho, people will stick up for them, not for heals, but for damage. The damage part scales with power, and now works with minions. The damage part, also works a little like a condition, where it, ignores armor and other modifiers.

I’d say, there idea of Attrition and mine, somewhat differ.

Agreed on all points, Bweaty.

Necromancer; the class that’s supposed to facetank damage. Nevermind that the mechanic that permitted us to do so was nerfed (removing Death Shroud’s ability to absorb a single hit of any amount at the cost of all remaining life force).

Necromancer; the class that’s supposed to be the attritionist. Nevermind that other classes have superior sustain and damage mitigation skills; some of which don’t even require a trait or opportunity cost to use.

Necromancer; the class that’s supposed to have the best sustain. Nevermind that extra hit points (Death Shroud) means nothing in this game when focus CC-ed with no or very limited/situational access to block, evade, invulnerability, stability, stealth, or vigor.

The profession that arguably had the greatest variety of viable builds in GW1 has been reduced to go conditionmancer or go home in GW2. Reading you loud and clear, ArenaNet.

Yeah you can argue their viability if you include the damage, but that is not what the point of these were or should be.

If they aren’t going to ever make life steal respectable, please just stop wasting a trait line and dump the siphon traits and do something more productive and creative for us here in the Blood line.

Well, Im not on the ‘extra damage is what heals need’ fence. Just that if I say anything bad against it, or DumbFire. People get on the shutup, we got more damage you noob, bandwagon.

So trying a MM+minions heal spec. Invasion started as I traited up. Awesome!
I’m usually quite happy soloing first 2 waves invasions.
Just had myself owned 3 times in a row, from pulling 3 trash mobs from the edge.
Might be wrong due to the new screen clutter Im not used to… But… Minions don’t siphon life when Im CC’ed?!!

Is it like when I get chilled, my minions auto-get chilled even tho they off over there somewhere no where near me?

Overall I am upset about the lackluster “buff” to life steal (not a buff at all if you don’t understand sarcasm lol)

I do think the added damage is cool and im excited about trying a MM build in PvE

They buffed all life stealing trait stuff by giving us 1-3 more damage per tick, yet they NERFED bloodthirst by 30%… Oh yea, nice improvements! They made this line even worse.. Good job!

Bravo

To clarify:
Healing Power scaling is “x 0.004”

Vampiric has had a boost on base value.

Vampiric has had a nurf on base value, but has been fixed to do correct extra damage with power.

Vampiric Precision has been fixed to correct damage with power and scale with healing power.

Bloodthirst has had a 30% nurf.

Overall, it’s a healing nurf, damage boost/fix. Even with the healing power scaling & full healing power gear.
It is a boost to ‘heals support necro’ using transfusion & Deatlhy Invigoration.
Boost to maxing minion damage with power gear.

20/0/20/20/10, Training of the Master, Minion Master, Flesh of the Master, Transfusion, Vampiric Master, Path of Midnight. Cleric type gears.
MM build, may now be viable in dungeons without 1shot mechanics, as your fast transfusion and the boost to minion life may let you keep them up longer.
Still won’t help in ‘most’ dungeons, AoE events like invasions, or world boss’s.

I guess what Anet wants us to do is not use bloodthirst. That’s the only thing I can come up with that would explain why they would buff base drain while nerfing the most important siphoning skill that would be in a siphoning build…

Which doesn’t make sense, but hey: anet logic.

First off, ANet is deathly afraid of indestructible SPVP necro bunkers. End result, they will move with extreme caution when it comes to upping necro survivability.

Second, ANet is attempting to favor build diversity in the Blood line. This by making Bloodthirst optional rather than mandatory when building for siphon. Thus freeing up a trait slot. Or at least that seems to be their thinking.

digiowl.9620:

First off, ANet is deathly afraid of indestructible SPVP necro bunkers. End result, they will move with extreme caution when it comes to upping necro survivability.

Second, ANet is attempting to favor build diversity in the Blood line. This by making Bloodthirst optional rather than mandatory when building for siphon. Thus freeing up a trait slot. Or at least that seems to be their thinking.

I already figured Anet would be concerned with indestructible necro bunkers but have yet to understand if Anet actually tests some of this stuff thoroughly enough before it goes live. I honestly can’t even see a point in picking up these traits as they scale horribly and pretty much give the same health they gave before the patch just makes as if no change even happened to begin with..kitten es me off =/

digiowl.9620:

First off, ANet is deathly afraid of indestructible SPVP necro bunkers. End result, they will move with extreme caution when it comes to upping necro survivability.

Second, ANet is attempting to favor build diversity in the Blood line. This by making Bloodthirst optional rather than mandatory when building for siphon. Thus freeing up a trait slot. Or at least that seems to be their thinking.

Except for the part where it really isn’t optional if you want to focus on siphon. Even 20% (which is not great) is a cheaper price than statting your gear around improving the siphon healing.

digiowl.9620:

First off, ANet is deathly afraid of indestructible SPVP necro bunkers. End result, they will move with extreme caution when it comes to upping necro survivability.

Second, ANet is attempting to favor build diversity in the Blood line. This by making Bloodthirst optional rather than mandatory when building for siphon. Thus freeing up a trait slot. Or at least that seems to be their thinking.

So long as they fear improvements over 1 or 2 point health increases on siphoning at a time, the traits will feel weak and close to irrelevant. They don’t impact your playstyle to form the basis of a new build or style, which is a shame.

Condi with dhuumfire plays a certain way. Necro with full wells and trait support plays and feels a certain way. Minion master clearly has its niche and traits. But a life stealing build? It’s just not there, they feel like minor abilities tacked on to whatever the rest of your build is. Drain and deal 40 damage per hit, its not significant, doesn’t change how you play nor even how you survive in a fight.

At the end of a long battle you’ve drained maybe an extra 1000 or 1500 hundred health, big whoop, its very lackluster. That’s barely better than one 5 second regen, a buff given out like candy to certain other specs in the game.

Personal numbers for vampiric: 28-42 now 35-40, as said before, no change to my build just made bloodthirst worse.

I’m seriously thinking of deleting my necro, most useless class ever, Warriors basically roflstomp everything and pretty much every class does what necro does more easily and effectively…

I hope they eventually buff bloodthirst back to 50%. I remade a siphoning build and I don’t plan to change builds again.

So basically, bloodthirst was removed by arena net. Very logical design. I guess I’ll use quickening thirst now instead. At least i’ll have some mobility.

I think someone posted the following link during the last “balance” patch. Because I needed a laugh and something to cheer me up over the disappointment of this latest fiasco, I link it here for your amusement (the section on Shamans has special relevance):

World of Warcraft Class Stereotypes by Wowcrendor

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

I think someone posted the following link during the last “balance” patch. Because I needed a laugh and something to cheer me up over the disappointment of this latest fiasco, I link it here for your amusement (the section on Shamans has special relevance):

World of Warcraft Class Stereotypes by Wowcrendor

Funny, i posted Crendogs video when they removed the DS absorb.

Big shocker that there’s no red posts in here giving us any idea whats going on.

I honestly was hoping that the changes would make me want to play a vampire build. However, I may as well go cookie-cutter condi-mancer. Even if I lose out on the minimal healing it offers my dps is much stronger so things die much quicker. Until anet decides to make our siphoning less of a joke and more of a viable option, IMO the 20% increase in transfusion will just sit as unused as every other blood magic trait.

ANet here’s a clue for you, support on a necro, won’t get us invited to more parties than we were invited to before. Fix the condi stack limit, make condi damage affect structures, make us the attrition class you promised! Tweaking the numbers so we are left back where we started may look good to the marketing team, but it censored to an actual necro playing gamer.

kailin.4905:

Big shocker that there’s no red posts in here giving us any idea whats going on.

Kind of like the lack of red posts when they nerfed Death Shroud with the last “balance” patch:

Anyone else getting tired of this?

Aren’t we worse off now?

Can Death Shroud actually be balanced?

Death Shroud brainstorming

DeathShroud is now base 100% HP

Defensive Suggestions

July 23rd patch notes: hidden buffs edition

Necro Demotivational Poster

Necromancer’s only defense!

Respect for Necro Mains

sPvP forum to dictate the future of Necros

with new dhumfire patch

Would you like some cake?

kailin.4905:

Big shocker that there’s no red posts in here giving us any idea whats going on.

What do you expect them to say, history of patches has proven that they have absolutely no kittening idea what to do with this class. This patch had absolutely nothing for us except quality of life.

You would think when you specifically say “improvements” then your improvements actually make the numbers stay the same or even go down in many cases you would want to say SOMETHING. There was a red post withing an hour of release on the GD thief forum because they had a kittening tooltip error. And at this point I agree. They have no clue about the class, or even the game for that matter. I just came back after about 3 weeks off playing something else and within an hour I was reminded what a mess things are from the optimization of the engine itself right down to to every game mode. I sat there watching the livestream yesterday and honestly found myself thinking what an awkward sloppy mess it was. Its like they don’t even know how to play there own game. Almost felt bad for the guys doing the show because it looked to forced and…ugh I dunno it was just weird.

I had been saying since GW1. Vampiric skills need to be actual skills with cooldowns, and the life stealing happens overtime to prevent spiking.

Well, it’s not a net nerf this time, so I guess that’s progress ?

kailin.4905:

You would think when you specifically say “improvements” then your improvements actually make the numbers stay the same or even go down in many cases you would want to say SOMETHING. There was a red post withing an hour of release on the GD thief forum because they had a kittening tooltip error. And at this point I agree. They have no clue about the class, or even the game for that matter. I just came back after about 3 weeks off playing something else and within an hour I was reminded what a mess things are from the optimization of the engine itself right down to to every game mode. I sat there watching the livestream yesterday and honestly found myself thinking what an awkward sloppy mess it was. Its like they don’t even know how to play there own game. Almost felt bad for the guys doing the show because it looked to forced and…ugh I dunno it was just weird.

Agreed.

They either pigeonhole the class more and more into conditionmancer or try to make it into some kind of half-baked bursty dark mage. Where’s the attrition? Where’s the sustain?

I’ll tell you where. Thief is this game’s attrition fighter and guardian is the sustain class. Functionally, those are the roles they are fulfilling. Certainly far better than necromancer, the supposed archetypical attrition and sustain profession.

A little tip; Death Shroud ain’t cuttin’ it (nor is the pathetic amount of life siphoning we’ve been given). DS is just extra health in a game where DPS is king; in other words, useless for providing attrition or sustain. DS was originally our downed state and the botched and perpetually bugged reworking of it into our profession-specific mechanic really shows.

I know you want to be your own special snowflake, ArenaNet, but it really wouldn’t hurt to go back to GW1 and revisit what made necromancer unique and actually capable of fulfilling the attrition and sustain role.

I’m not asking for a lock, stock, and barrel port of the GW1 necro into GW2. Just go play it for a bit and discover the synergies and mechanics which – when played skillfully – made for true attrition and sustain. Then figure out what you need to do to capture that spirit and incorporate it into GW2’s necromancer. Because as things stand now, you’re waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay off the mark.

I think I’m missing something here, why are we being pidgeon holed into condition builds? I kinda get it for PvP/WvW, but in PvE conditions builds are pretty weak, especially when most other more viable classes have better access to those conditions?

Still think Anet are being pretty stupid trying to balance PvP, WvW, and PvE without splitting the skills between the two. If you wanna do that then you have to bring the PvE mobs down to the level of players, because anything that isn’t a trash mob in this game makes condition/control builds seem like a big waste of time.

Just saying.

They really should have made the heal part of siphon a percent of damage done, then had the damage scale off of power better even if this involved moving traits around to make you go farther in blood, in most builds that i see go blood you do it at the cost of having lower burst by forgoing +crit damage, and this siphon becomes your crit damage and a chunk of your survivability the way they have it set up no this is just no viable.

So again I’ll bring this up. (Yes I know class’s are different, that our siphon dose damage, but if I wanted damage, I’d use damage traits not heals, and this is just a point of reference)

Ele – Signet of Restoration – No trait cost, 0.1 Healing Power CoEffient. 202 Heal Per Hit.

Nec – Vampiric – 15 Trait cost, 0.004 Healing Power CoEfficent. 32 Heal Per Hit.

Ok so we can beef it up with a Major trait. To 40 Heal Per hit.

20 Traits, not even 1/4th the per hit heal. Total kitty!

More traits, crits can heal. Say zerkers gear got us to 50% crit, it’s +20 heal per hit on adv. Stacking with the other siphon, that’s FINALLY 1/4th the heal per hit.

Ok, minions can heal you with even more trait & skill costs.
But even with this, 16% nurf to it’s heals, then 30% nurf to the trait to make it stronger… Some kitty improvement!

At the very least, this shows the developers voice too much excitement for these miniscule changes. Maybe someone is spiking the coffee at ArenaNet’s offices.

To be honest im disappointed also with the ‘improvements’ that they done with our siphons. If you were nit picking then yes it was an improvement but so is hanging a picture in a derelict building but it doesn’t make it any better.

I think the biggest gripe is time and time again we get told to wait for the next patch, there is a ton of improvements and fixes coming. And time and time again we are left feeling like the development team thinks we are idiots and can throw anything at us, call it a great patch and think we wouldn’t notice that it aint that great.

My problem is how long did it take for you to make these so called improvements? Because the time spent on our siphons and for the end result out of it, I would rather it have been spent working on something else that needed fixed for the Necro class.

Let’s be honest. This patch is a flop. For most classes that were expecting some overdue changes, simple logical changes, they received nothing. If Anet uses their Friends and Family to test out these changes then I’d say it’s a family full of fail. They really need to open a Test Server and allow their customers to test changes before they implement such pathetic modifications and call them improvements.

I would wager more than half the customer base could balance these classes faster, better, and more even handed then what the Anet dev team is doing.

Siphoning is already decent (not great, just decent), if you 1) use it in WvW zerg fights with AOE skills; 2) use it with minions in PvP; 3) realize that you’re getting a fairly substantial damage increase for traiting in the vitality tree; 4) realize that the signets etc. other classes get have bad main heals attached to them, so they’re not necessarily completely comparable. It’s also outstanding for solo PvE content in minion builds. I go 20 deep for siphoning most of the time and seem to miss it when I’ve tried going without it.

On the other hand, siphoning sucks in 1v1 fights (unless you use minions, in which case you’re nearly indestructable), and I can see why we might feel a little irked about the comparison between signets and siphoning or food and siphoning.

ANet probably should have just buffed Vampiric, Vampiric Precision and Vampiric Rituals by 100%, left Bloodthirst alone, and maybe reduced Vampiric Master by 10% or so. That wouldn’t make necro the 1v1 attrition master that thief is, but it might make BM just a little more attractive and improve our durability somewhat.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

sPvP forum to dictate the future of Necros

For all the bellyaching out of the SPVPers for lack of content, they sure have the devs ears when it comes to “balance”.

I swear, the general SPVP forum is flooded with ANet red…

Honestly ANet, just give up on the esport thing already. And face the fact that most PVPers go for WVW, because they can show of their PVE shinies.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the changes were more for the appearance of “doing something for the necro” than actually changing anyhting at all when you compare it to some of the other class changes. Why any of the devs would single out these changes as a feature of this patch for necros just reinforces that suspicion.

The other issue is that in some of the dev posts they keep mentioning that they are waiting to see how the changes affect the “meta”. What “meta” and how to they measure the changes to it? It would be nice if in their “newly discovered sharing of information sharing mode” if we could actually see this “meta” thing they are measuring things against so we would at least have an inkling of what they expect of us. But I fear they will avoid this at all costs because it would then become a defacto tool for measuring THEIR performance in meeting their “meta” goals.

The meta would be the SPVP builds and counterbuilds.

Gotta agree with oldbugga here. The fact that the trait line was even mentioned was just to make it look like they did something in the 4 months they spent on this “balance patch”. Even halloween itself sucks this year as they made it even more of a grind than before. My last real hope for this lost cause was that in the second year more would get done because they would have there “portfolio” of events and could devote more time to other things. Obviously that is not the case and all they are devoted to is time gating and selling RNG to line there pockets. The game has minor redeeming qualities and is an ok option to kill a few hours a month doing a meta achievement here and there. Other than that I have stopped considering this an MMO and will be looking elsewhere for that niche.

This patch was pretty sad based on how much Anet hyped it up. Honestly, I’d settle for Bloodthirsty being 20% had they buffed siphon base damage/healing a little more and gave a larger increase to scaling. Then at least its a 20% buff to something a bit larger. All this patch did was leave siphons the same while opening up Deathly Invigoration and Mark of Evasion up to siphon builds, but really what’s the point when siphon builds will clearly want to take siphon traits as thats the whole focus…

If you really wanted to open up build diversity you’d add a larger healing coefficient to siphons (to making healing power sets like cleric more viable) and let transfusion instead heal allies for a percentage of your siphons.

This is poop and there will be beatings sums up my feelings!

lol @ this blame anet for hyping up. How can you not learn it all these times playing necro? Everytime I see anything in preview/patch note about necro, I tell myself to wait and see. So far a whole year has passed, I’ve NEVER seen one change about necro that makes me say “omg this is amazing”, never~

Afya.5842:

lol @ this blame anet for hyping up. How can you not learn it all these times playing necro? Everytime I see anything in preview/patch note about necro, I tell myself to wait and see. So far a whole year has passed, I’ve NEVER seen one change about necro that makes me say “omg this is amazing”, never~

BUT, BUT, BUT FIRE……

I know, I didn’t want it either…

Most of us aren’t even looking for amazing anymore as much as “omg it actually functions at all” when it comes to necromancer. In the case of blood traits I think people are mad because it was for the most part the lone significant change to the class in this patch and it literally does nothing. People are left wondering if changes were even made because its a bit hard to buy it took 4 months to raise one value, lower another, and come out with the same healing we had 4 months ago.

No kidding.

The whole blood line is worthless, pretty much the whole death line is worthless.

Food does Blood magic better than traits do.

nekretaal.6485:

No kidding.

The whole blood line is worthless, pretty much the whole death line is worthless.

Food does Blood magic better than traits do.

Ritual of Life, Transfusion & DI (very good team support), Well Cooldowns (bigger dps boost than going 30 into power) and if it worked correctly (as in didnt have a cooldown like most dodge skill drops) MoD are all good.

I was leveling up my necro with a life siphon build in mind, then found this old post. Does the community still feel this is accurate?

Should I shelve this effort now?

I’m not that interested in a condi necro — I’m looking for a viable life siphon option. Feedback welcome now that we’re a few months farther down this road.

Nothing has changed since then, so yes it is still accurate.

Odds are nothing will be changed about it in the future either

Life Siphon builds can be done almost as well by any other class (thieves could concievably do better with a venom build). Even in the highest siphoning build a necro can build, most of the siphons come from items.

I wouldn´t recomend a siphon buid at all. The only viable build is well’o’mancer in WvW. In this case you only benefit from the amount of enemies.
For normal PvE i´ll recommend Spoj`s build or a typical 30/10/0/0/30 build. The last one is pretty straight forward and easy to learn

Siphoning is a viable method for survival if you pair it with Spectral/DS attrition. Its not as good as it should be, but it is noticable. You can leech 200hp per second with just Vampiric+Vampiric Precision if you have 80%+ crit with fury.