Guild Wars 2

I’ll apologize in advance if there is an easy place I can find this information – hopefully you’ll point me in the right direction if that’s the case.

I’ve been leveling my necro towards maximizing lifesteal in a well/power d/d build, mostly for fun & flavor but it seems to be pretty viable. However I’m having troubling figuring out how much I’m benefiting from healing power, and how the different lifesteal effects actually stack. I was unable to get clear answers from the wiki, and the combat log doesn’t appear to list heals. Here are my main questions -

1) What does healing power actually scale with? I think it was in one of the But of Corpse podcasts I heard that vampiric precision is a flat rate, and from the wiki it would seem all trait line lifesteal effects are unaffected. The wiki states that sigil of blood is effected, but doesn’t state whether runes of vampirism are or not. As I understand it, dagger 2 does scale with healing.

2) What lifesteal effects stack? Right now I have vampiric, vampiric precision, vampiric rituals, sigil of blood, runes of vampirism, and lifesteal food. Lets take a basic auto attack that crits . We have on hit effect from traits, and 4 different on crit lifesteal effects. Firstly, does the on hit and on crit effect stack? And, do all of those lifesteal effects stack, assuming they all go off? Now lets consider a damaging well – does the grandmaster trait stack with the on hit effect? Can well damage crit, and trigger the on crit lifesteal?

This is probably an excessive amount of detail for what will probably only ever be a flavour build, but for me a lot of the joy of building is understanding exactly how everything works together. If there was an in-game way to test all this stuff myself I would, but all I see right now in combat is a big stack of green numbers which are too smooshed together to be read. Any advice, or any place I should look for more details on trait/stat/upgrade component effect stacking?

1) In the Blood Magic trait line, only Vampiric is affected by Healing Power (and only since the recent patch). It will scale up to an additional 6 points of damage based on Power and an additional 6 points of life siphoning based on Healing Power. How much Power and how much Healing Power are required to reach the ceiling of 6 points has not been stated in the patch notes.

I have not personally conducted exhaustive testing to discover these cut-off points, either, as I don’t consider the investment worth it for an extra 6 points of life siphoning; given how much would be sacrificed from my other stats. Perhaps someone else has done such testing, though. We were promised improved life siphoning and this is what we got :/

Dagger 2 (Life Siphon) does scale per the wiki and can be a fantastic healing skill in conjunction with all of your other sources of life siphoning. Try to think of it as your primary heal and reserve Consume Conditions (or whatever else you decide to use) for when you’re in dire need. Rune of Vampirism is a flat life siphon. Sigil of Blood scales per the wiki. Signet of the Locust scales per the wiki.

2) Yes, they all stack assuming they all go off; both on hit and on crit. Which is why you can get some crazy healing from dagger 2.

Yes, all wells (including non-damaging wells such as Well of Blood and Well of Power) will stack life siphoning on hit, on critical hit, and the grandmaster trait per pulse.

It sounds like you have a good life siphoning build put together. Yes, the life siphoning numbers are difficult to see when standing still and they aren’t reflected in the combat log as healing. One suggestion is to kite in a circle around an enemy while attacking. It spreads out the numbers so they’re easier to see. Also, you can isolate each trait, rune, and sigil so you see only those numbers associated with that trait or upgrade.

For example, trait only Vampiric Precision while removing your runes and sigils to see what life siphoning you get from that trait alone. Granted, you’ll still be equipped with Vampiric as a minor trait and there’s nothing you can do about it. However, you should be able to easily distinguish the life siphoning you receive from Vampiric from Vampiric Precision. Then repeat this process for the other traits and items. Don’t forget that Bloodthirst improves life siphons from all sources. Take that into account during your testing, as well.

Lastly, you receive no healing from life siphoning if you’re already at full health. You’ll need to take a little damage first if you want to see the green numbers pop up while testing. Do your testing in the Mists so it’s unaffected by the healing bonus your server receives from WvWvW.

All lifesteal effects stack, so feel free to grab as many sources as you like.

Healing Power does not work on any of our Siphoning traits except Vampiric with the recent patch. That said, the “scaling” (actually thresholds) is terrible, as you only get up to 6 extra points of healing from healing power.

For a life siphoning build, I suggest you test warhorn as your off-hand weapon. Locust Swarm pulses once per second for 10 seconds. Each pulse counts as a hit, is an AoE that can hit up to 5 opponents, and can potentially crit. It should be readily apparent the crazy amount of life siphoning you can generate from this skill.

Throw in swiftness for you, crippling your enemies, a little extra direct damage, and life force generation and it becomes a great compliment to a dagger life siphoning build.

Thanks for the detailed response, that’s exactly what I was looking for! It was all what I thought was true, but wanted confirmation. I’m also more convinced than I was before that the 300 healing power from 30 in blood + death to life is all I’ll need, and my stat points will be better spent elsewhere. Running zerkers currently – the lifesteal plus extra health pool from ds seems to be more than enough to keep me going, but we’ll see how it fairs in dungeons. The warhorn is a great idea, I’ll probably use that as my main and d/d as my swap with a staff on standby.

I’m wondering if you have any advice for trait distribution, I’ve been debating between 20/20/0/30/0 and 30/10/0/30/0. I’m a big fan of chilling darkness, but since the ground targeted marks are an adept trait now it might be worth it to go for more straight dps (either Spite grandmaster trait could give me that). Correct me if I’m wrong, but lifestealing isn’t going to benefit me in ds, so it seems like I shouldn’t be traiting into soul reaping, and I didn’t see anything in the death magic line that really caught my eye.

I’ve wanted to go power/vampire type.
As a general rule, healing power doesn’t do it for us.
Death into Life from Spite, and the extra Heals Power from Blood Magic should prob cover you.
After that, stacking healing power on gear is only going to give you about +4 heals or less per hit over stacking pow/pre gear.

Healing power ‘can’ be a boost from gear if your doing ‘support’ with Well of Blood & Transfusion. But excluding rare situations where you need ‘burst heals’ support heals are much better/constant from Guard/Ele’s and your better using wells/marks as support. (Regen from staff 2 for example, works of there healing power, not yours)

I’ve also ended up with half Zerker half Knight gear for PvE. PvP I flip around depending on mood ;-P

My points distribution and traits are:

Spite 30 – V (though I sometimes change this depending on situation), X, XII

Rationale for choosing Close to Death (XII): it applies to all enemies below 50% health with no internal cooldown. Hard to beat an extra 20% damage across the board versus a trait that requires a critical hit, has an internal cooldown, inflicts a condition that can be removed, and only applies to a single opponent (I’m not a conditionmancer, so I’m not going to be spreading burning via Epidemic).

Curses 10 – III or IV or VI (now that Focused Rituals has been made an Adept trait).

Rationale for choosing Chilling Darkness: It synergizes with Well of Darkness and Plague’s Plague of Darkness for a nice blind and chill shut-down combo. Works great in WvWvW. With Focused Rituals now made an Adept trait, I’ve been playing around with putting wells up on walls. It’s niche, but has its uses.

Death Magic 10 – II or IV

Rationale for choosing Greater Marks: I like having both range and melee at my disposal at the same time. I do a lot of WvWvW and having Greater Marks is indispensable in my opinion. If ArenaNet ever decides to increase the size of our default marks, I’ll put these 10 points somewhere else. Ritual of Protection is situational; usually reserved for dungeons as a bit of party support.

Blood Magic 20 – II and V

Rationale: for the life siphoning, of course. The reason I don’t go 30 points into Blood Magic and take Vampiric Rituals is I find an additional 10 points of siphoning per well pulse to be lackluster and not worth the investment. Especially as they already siphon from Vampiric and have the potential to siphon even more with Vampiric Precision, runes, and sigils.

Assuming you caught 5 opponents inside a well and they remained there the whole duration (a very unlikely scenario), our longest duration well – Well of Blood – would heal you for an additional 500 points via Vampiric Rituals. All other wells would heal you for lesser amounts. I find better uses for those 10 points in the other trait lines.

You are correct; life siphoning will not benefit you while in DS. Which isn’t to say it isn’t useful. However, as many of the Soul Reaping traits revolve around gaining life force and maintaining DS up time, I find dagger+warhorn achieves similar results (note I said similar; not identical and not equal) without the trait point investment.

Dagger is our fastest striking weapon and generates 8% life force when completing a full attack chain. Locust Swarm generates 1% life force for each enemy it strikes with every pulse (restricted to a max of 5 opponents as per other AoEs). Between the two, you can regenerate life force pretty quickly in the presence of a sufficient number of targets.

You should fair very well in dungeons. The key to this build is to be very aggressive. You have to hit if you’re going to life siphon. So get in there and slash away

Thanks again, looks really good. I’ve been almost exclusively running around open world and very rarely need to use a staff, so ill make those my last 10 points (I’m currently still 75) As you said, with dagger/ warhorn it’s important to be up in their face, especially in a big group of mobs, to get the most out of life stealing. Then again, with the larger size marks it makes it much easier to hit five targets and proc life steal that way. I think I’ll also go with the suggestion to mix in some knights gear to make sure I don’t get instantly flattened in melee range. It’s maybe not the most optimal build in the world, but its much, much better than just the silly experiment I thought it would be.

I run full Knight’s, as well. I prefer balanced stats with maybe a little emphasis on just one over the others. Knight’s provides this with a nice balance of power, toughness, and precision. With such a high natural health pool, vitality is not as important for us unless going full tank. Healing Power – as has already been discussed – is very lackluster for us; especially for a life siphoning build that gains very little from that stat (which makes no sense, but it is what it is).

Once you get used to fighting in melee range with a light armor profession, the build does have very good survivability. As mentioned, though, it’s active suvivability as opposed to passive survivability. Unlike the classic tank that sits there as a hit point sponge and damage mitigator meat shield, the survivability of this life siphon build comes from remaining constantly on the attack and in motion.