Guild Wars 2

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/October-15th-balance-skills-updates-preview/page/2#post2833264

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/October-15th-balance-skills-updates-preview/page/2#post2833264

JonathanSharp.7094:

Hey guys, here are some of the improvements you can expect to see for the October 15th release. Let us know what you think about them and we’ll take this into consideration. Some of these may not make it in for that release, but I wanted to give you guys a high level preview of what we’re working on and give you an opportunity to give us your feedback.

Trait tooltips
Traits will now have tooltips in the same way that skills do. This means that you’ll be able to see EXACTLY how long an effect lasts, what its cooldown is, etc. We want this system to be as transparent as possible for our players, so that they can make the best decisions when creating their profession builds.

Skill tooltips as they pertain to traits
As traits impact a skill, we’ve also made it so that as skills are impacted by a trait, the skill’s tooltips adjust accordingly. Again, we want players to be able to see these details in their builds, so that they can build their characters exactly the way they want! We’ll be using different colors to show this so that it’s easier for players to see!

Other Misc. fixes:
Tab Targeting Improvements

• Now prioritizes Champs/Legendary, then players/clones, then everything else
• Deselecting your target now resets tab selection history (aka, you’ll start tabbing through from the beginning if you deselect)
• Can now tab target if your character can see the target (Was dependent on camera before)

Floater Improvements:
When you cause condition damage, all damage of a given type (burning, bleed, poison, etc.) will be grouped into a single # with an icon, making them much easier to read. This also allows players suffering from these conditions to more easily see them, and know when they should use condition removal. Note that this is an option, so that you can disable it if you want to (and return to the old system).

Better fast cast ground targeting:
We split this into 3 different options; so that players can more easily cater how ground targeting works for them.

1. Double tap to cast
2. Press the button to cast
3. Release the button to cast
   SO GET YO CAST ON!

Pet HP split between PvE and PvP
We wanted to make pets and summons more viable in PvE/WvW while making sure they didn’t become too strong in PvP.

Launch will now be stun breakable
We felt it made it sense to let stun breakers also help you when you are launched, since this is consistent with how stun breakers respond to other control effects.

/end of post 1

JonathanSharp.7094:

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.

For QoL (again, quality of life) we also improved the Life Force meter to show the actual bar better (moved slightly so it’s not competing with the skill icon for UI space), and the bar now shows your current Life Force amount, and the tooltip also shows current/max Life Force available. It makes it much easier to see how much Life Force you have, and lets you plan your engagements better.

JonathanSharp.7094:

Further down the Road

• We’re reworking the combat log to make it more easily used. This will involve help from a ton of departments, but it will help every player in the game. By providing you better combat information, you’ll be able to better make tweaks to your build, and you’ll be able to better adjust your play to deal with difficult encounters.

• We’re also looking to make conditions scale better in PvE/WvW leveling so that they’re more viable at different junctures in the level scale.

• Runes/Sigils are also something the balance team wants to improve. We’d like to see cooler effects on some of the sets, so we’ll be working towards that. They also lead to a lot of build diversity, so we want more sets to be stronger so that it gives you guys more options in your builds.

• The patch notes will be much bigger than this, but we just wanted to give you guys a little insight into what’s coming in the near future from the balance team!

• Traits. We’re always looking at traits and trying to fix the traits that don’t seem as sweet as others.

So that’s pretty much it! Feel free to leave feedback and ideas/concerns and we’ll be watching to see what you guys come up with!


-Balance and skill team

oZii.2864:

and the tooltip also shows current/max Life Force available.

interesting… no more guessing how much percent of our regular hp the shroud pool really is.

I think the best part of this is that the previous leak was just confirmed to be accurate, when we had all the threads closed for being speculation.

More on topic, I love that the Vampiric changes have been confirmed.

Just to add to the above, these are a few things that are called out that could affect us specifically:

Guardians

We reworked Purging Flames: it now removes three conditions from allies in an area effect around the guardian on cast while still burning enemies (enemies that enter or exit the flames are still burned). Once the skill has been cast, it then reduces condition duration for allies who remain in the consecration’s area.

Rangers

The Bear condition removal isn’t strong enough, so we’ll be improving that.

Mesmer

Power Cleanse: We wanted to add some condition support, and made it so that this skill can remove 2 conditions from 5 allies.

So it does appear that to combat the condition heavy meta that are increasing other classes abilities to cleanse. We’ll see if this will go overboard or not. I can see some tweaking back and forth in the future, either to ensure conditions have a chance to do some damage before they are totally cleansed, or possibly to clear partial stacks rather than the entire stack.

Bhawb.7408:

I think the best part of this is that the previous leak was just confirmed to be accurate, when we had all the threads closed for being speculation.

More on topic, I love that the Vampiric changes have been confirmed.

They never said it wasn’t accurate, just not confirmed. Even the post by Jon is not 100%, which is fine. I’m just happy to get an idea of the direction they are heading.

The previous leak was definitely fake if you read them all. Part of it was increasing Mark of Evasion’s radius to 180 base…which it already is. There were a few other things that were being “fixed” that currently do not function the way that list says they currently do (that is, the way they currently work is how those notes say they will be made to work).

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

The previous leak was definitely fake if you read them all. Part of it was increasing Mark of Evasion’s radius to 180 base…which it already is. There were a few other things that were being “fixed” that currently do not function the way that list says they currently do (that is, the way they currently work is how those notes say they will be made to work).

Chances are what was “leaked” was a previous version of these notes.

My God…. It is like christmas…. just for this one:

Floater Improvements:
When you cause condition damage, all damage of a given type (burning, bleed, poison, etc.) will be grouped into a single # with an icon, making them much easier to read. This also allows players suffering from these conditions to more easily see them, and know when they should use condition removal. Note that this is an option, so that you can disable it if you want to (and return to the old system).

Finally…. I can see how much DPS I am actually doing. And…. I get the big numbers too… Can’t wait to make some videos after the patch with a big stonking “4250” come up when I land a beefed up 25 point epidemic.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

The previous leak was definitely fake if you read them all. Part of it was increasing Mark of Evasion’s radius to 180 base…which it already is. There were a few other things that were being “fixed” that currently do not function the way that list says they currently do (that is, the way they currently work is how those notes say they will be made to work).

This kind of off the wall, very specific change appearing in both tells me the leaked notes are most likely real.

For QoL (again, quality of life) we also improved the Life Force meter to show the actual bar better (moved slightly so it’s not competing with the skill icon for UI space), and the bar now shows your current Life Force amount, and the tooltip also shows current/max Life Force available. It makes it much easier to see how much Life Force you have, and lets you plan your engagements better.

I am very excited about all of these, especially possible changes to the Blood Magic tree and fast casting.
Will Blood Magic finally be a tree I want to invest points in? No, wait, I already want to, I just can’t because it’s inferior. Will that finally change?

The leaked notes have happened before and been very accurate, we went over this last time; the leaked notes are unfinished in-house notes. That means they are in-progress, not necessarily accurate, incomplete notes. Its just something that they use in-house as they go about balancing, then they make it finalized and pretty before they release it to us.

On the note of vampiric, since I’m too lazy to test, does siphon proc off structures?

Bhawb.7408:

The leaked notes have happened before and been very accurate, we went over this last time; the leaked notes are unfinished in-house notes. That means they are in-progress, not necessarily accurate, incomplete notes. Its just something that they use in-house as they go about balancing, then they make it finalized and pretty before they release it to us.

On the note of vampiric, since I’m too lazy to test, does siphon proc off structures?

It doesn’t. Supposedly at one point there was a patch note that mentioned something regarding siphon and doors/walls, but I can tell you as of right now, you don’t siphon off doors.

Just curious because with the improved Vampiric Master, I was going to laugh if I could kill Trebs even faster with Charge.

Godless.1857:

Just to add to the above, these are a few things that are called out that could affect us specifically:

Guardians

We reworked Purging Flames: it now removes three conditions from allies in an area effect around the guardian on cast while still burning enemies (enemies that enter or exit the flames are still burned). Once the skill has been cast, it then reduces condition duration for allies who remain in the consecration’s area.

Rangers

The Bear condition removal isn’t strong enough, so we’ll be improving that.

Mesmer

Power Cleanse: We wanted to add some condition support, and made it so that this skill can remove 2 conditions from 5 allies.

So it does appear that to combat the condition heavy meta that are increasing other classes abilities to cleanse. We’ll see if this will go overboard or not. I can see some tweaking back and forth in the future, either to ensure conditions have a chance to do some damage before they are totally cleansed, or possibly to clear partial stacks rather than the entire stack.

Conditions will always have a chance because cleansing is all based on cooldowns. It will be a lot harder but they will have a definite place.

The vampiric master won’t have a damage part.
Imagine all of your minion’s damage buffed by straight 100 damage per hit… that would be insane.

From the sound of it, the point is its always meant to have had that. Its only a DPS boost of about 40, 40 DPS per minion isn’t much to speak of, it’ll add up but I think its a fine way for minions to get a fairly small buff.

This one is also going on in the PvP forum which might be of interest to the PvP necro’s on here:

Stop making MAPS and give us MODES

This kinda sounds like bad news for necro pvp?

even power necro relies on cc conditions in pvp so more condition removal and whatanot is not really going to make it better for anyone. getting little life siphon buff only helps marginal group who want to focus on life siphoning, it doesn’t really help with general problems with death shroud after mechanic changes.

Blood traits, round two – fight! Let’s see if they actually manage to push them into the realm of viability this time. Of course, as long as they don’t apply a (short) internal cooldown to them, life stealing will forever be caught in the balance limbo between AoE and single target skills.

Also really hoping for a fix/redesign for dhuumfire, even though that’s probably too much to ask for.

Minions split to work in PvE against non-trash mobs…
Vamp that isn’t a joke…

Let’s hope it’s more than the balance patch’s promise of attrition, that gave us +6 heal per hit on Vamp if 100% heals gear, and removing useing DS to ‘block’…

Oh please ohhh please!

This patch is a big nerf.

1. Improvements to Blood traits don’t matter until we can get healed in shroud. What other class has a trait line with no synergy with their class mechanic?

2. Everybody else is getting big/mass condition removal

3. Pve minion improvement don’t matter because of anet design philosophy (they hate AI based damage and wouldn’t have done this unless minions still are terrible against high lvl pve).

Ground targeting will still be clunky, but the improvement will help a but

1. It actually does. Damage will scale with power, so power builds with siphoning will be more interesting, even in death shroud.
2. Guardians already had mass condition removal. This will only change the condition duration after its initial cast and improve it by a little bit. Mesmers needed a better condition removal to be able to be able to play on PvP again, and they may actually stage a comeback after the next patch.
3. Their improvement is PvE only, so it wont change anything for PvP.

If they actually fix a few of our broken skills, then it will be a huge improvement.

anyone knows about the next 17 September patch? any buff to our class?

ManaCraft.5630:

Blood traits, round two – fight! Let’s see if they actually manage to push them into the realm of viability this time. Of course, as long as they don’t apply a (short) internal cooldown to them, life stealing will forever be caught in the balance limbo between AoE and single target skills.

Also really hoping for a fix/redesign for dhuumfire, even though that’s probably too much to ask for.

That is kinda the point of lifesteal traits on a necro, we are the worst 1vx either way, if we can at least survive for long enough by cc and chip damage heals for allies to come (think of cho from lol) we could be quite efficient tanks.

teonimesic.1403:

Mesmers needed a better condition removal to be able to be able to play on PvP again, and they may actually stage a comeback after the next patch.

Mesmers were never technically unviable/wouldnt work, people just quit/decided its not worth it to use them as anything but the shatters and port/map control they were used to.

nekretaal.6485:

2. Everybody else is getting big/mass condition removal

I wonder what Well of Power is or Plague Signet is or Putrid Mark? Can someone please tell me what those are?

Also we have AoE condi application, AoE condi removal is quite lacking on other characters except a few.

Dirame.8521:

nekretaal.6485:

This patch is a big nerf.

1. Improvements to Blood traits don’t matter until we can get healed in shroud. What other class has a trait line with no synergy with their class mechanic?

I wonder what Soul reaping is.

I wonder what Blood Magic is?

That’s what he’s referring to. Blood Magic does not work with our class mechanic because we cannot be healed in Death Shroud. The fact other trait lines do actually function with our class mechanic is irrelevant to his point. No other class has a trait line that their own class mechanic turns off.

Those changes might be interesting. I must say I’ll be for ever grateful for better AI for minions.
Although reading official discussion under that changes there was mentioned that necros are OP in WvW together with Warriors. Is it true?

Andele.1306:

That is kinda the point of lifesteal traits on a necro, we are the worst 1vx either way, if we can at least survive for long enough by cc and chip damage heals for allies to come (think of cho from lol) we could be quite efficient tanks.

Could be you’re right, but that doesn’t really help, does it? If the lifesteal traits continue to be balanced around hitting five people at a time, they’ll remain too situational to be worth the points – at least in my book.

Also, I’m sorry to say that I never played lol so the analogy is kinda lost on me.

I don’t see how they need to be balanced for AoE. If you are hitting 5 people, 5 people can hit you back, and with our current life siphon system, along with the way that our defenses don’t scale up nearly as well as damage/CC does on the other end, our actual healing/damage ratio goes considerably down in bigger fights compared to 1v1.

On the other side though, people seem to have this idea that life stealing should be big values, which just isn’t ever going to be the case.

sAdam.5876:

Those changes might be interesting. I must say I’ll be for ever grateful for better AI for minions.
Although reading official discussion under that changes there was mentioned that necros are OP in WvW together with Warriors. Is it true?

People that think WvW is all about open field s/tPvP think they are OP mostly small man roaming teams of 5 that find another group of 8 people to fight then complain that there is to many condis because they lost a fight out numbered. I like to small man roam but I know its not about that, and if you happen to GvG warriors have to go tanky(more distraction than damage) and necros are more about boon removal you run a terrormancer(the one everyone says is OP) build in a 10 v 10 or 15 v 15 GvG and you will be dead after a few seconds if your not then someone has to baby sit you(guardian or warrior) which means your a liability.

What exactly do people want lifesteal to do? I will attest to it not being of the highest caliber currently, but is the Necro community expecting a 15 point investment into Blood to instantly make them invincible in a 1v1 scenario?

If you make life steal too strong then it will make Necros way too strong when using omnomberry ghosts. Those things already heal a ton. The obvious solution is to nerf the food and make blood a worthy trait tree, but of course they wouldnt do that.

Currently, running knights gear and omnom ghosts with 20 in blood, I siphon so much health that I sometimes feel invincible in 1vX. The procs and healing from the dagger #2 channel is enough to take me from half health to full. And with dagger auto attacks and the right blood traits I can siphon a lot of HP consistently.

Doesnt work in Spvp because Anet said sorry no Knights gear.

Arianna.7642:

What exactly do people want lifesteal to do? I will attest to it not being of the highest caliber currently, but is the Necro community expecting a 15 point investment into Blood to instantly make them invincible in a 1v1 scenario?

I think most people would like two things:

1. A heavy investment in the blood tree (30 points), means you get sustainable healing to make that investment valuable. If that also takes Apoc gear, or Clerics gear or whatever, then so be it, but the option to do this should be there. Currently there is nothing at the 30 point in blood to justify going that high.

2. Apoc/Clerics gear should actually be worth using. The healing power scaling should be such that if we want to get sustain healing we can.

I agree that if you buff up siphon across the board, then everyone will just run 30/20/0/20/0, and be unstoppable. But if you buff up scaling on the siphon traits significantly, then necros will start taking healing power, and that adds diversity.

I for one would like a build defining 30 point trait in blood. Of course they didn’t rework the tree so this won’t happen this time around.

Rennoko.5731:

I think most people would like two things:

1. A heavy investment in the blood tree (30 points), means you get sustainable healing to make that investment valuable. If that also takes Apoc gear, or Clerics gear or whatever, then so be it, but the option to do this should be there. Currently there is nothing at the 30 point in blood to justify going that high.

2. Apoc/Clerics gear should actually be worth using. The healing power scaling should be such that if we want to get sustain healing we can.

I agree that if you buff up siphon across the board, then everyone will just run 30/20/0/20/0, and be unstoppable. But if you buff up scaling on the siphon traits significantly, then necros will start taking healing power, and that adds diversity.

I for one would like a build defining 30 point trait in blood. Of course they didn’t rework the tree so this won’t happen this time around.

While I completely understand this, I feel as though it does not mesh with what Arenanet has in mind for the Necromancer. And as it stands, their vision of the Necromancer apparently trumps any and all community feedback given by the Necromancer populace.

Frankly, I’m under the impression that they A) Never intended the Healing stat to be a heavily used stat in general, and B ) Never will intend for Necromancer to make much use out of the Healing stat. This is apparent in their nearly static life siphoning numbers, the inability to heal through Deathshroud and the trash scaling of Healing power across the board on the Necromancer abilities, giving it one of the least effective return on investments in terms of stat points. Outside of Well of Blood, it is nearly a worthless stat for our Profession in particular, sadly.

Arianna.7642:

While I completely understand this, I feel as though it does not mesh with what Arenanet has in mind for the Necromancer. And as it stands, their vision of the Necromancer apparently trumps any and all community feedback given by the Necromancer populace.

Frankly, I’m under the impression that they A) Never intended the Healing stat to be a heavily used stat in general, and B ) Never will intend for Necromancer to make much use out of the Healing stat. This is apparent in their nearly static life siphoning numbers, the inability to heal through Deathshroud and the trash scaling of Healing power across the board on the Necromancer abilities, giving it one of the least effective return on investments in terms of stat points. Outside of Well of Blood, it is nearly a worthless stat for our Profession in particular, sadly.

I think you have to take with a grain of salt everything they say. Their “vision” of the necromancer as an attrition machine went out window when they introduced burning and the out of control burst that created. They have been stepping that call back patch after patch, with nerfs to dummfire and terror.

Everything is on the table at this stage. I would gladly accept a nerf to damage it it would allow more inventive play. Unfortunately the siphon as currenly designed is very binary. Hit the guy, get some HP, hit the guy again, get HP. Fails to be an interesting mechanic.

How about a scaling siphon that increases with each consecutive hit within say 2 seconds, scaling up 10 times. Stun the necro, and you break the siphon chain. Let the chain go up to 10, and he is really stealing a lot of HP.

Of course I doubt we will ever see anything like that.

Rennoko.5731:

How about a scaling siphon that increases with each consecutive hit within say 2 seconds, scaling up 10 times. Stun the necro, and you break the siphon chain. Let the chain go up to 10, and he is really stealing a lot of HP.

Of course I doubt we will ever see anything like that.

I’ve been thinking about something like that, and I think it could work, if they implemented it more like Vlad (from LoL)’s E. You have a self-buff that you stack up over time, and by keeping it up, it makes your siphons stronger.

What I would like life steal to do is to give me the 200 or so point of healing (whatever almost nothing amount it is) on Death shroud 1, 2, and 4.

This shouldn’t be broken. DS 1, 2 are long cast, easy to dodge, DS 4 is long cooldown.

I hate hate hate how I can fight somebody to a draw, but with lousy mobility I can’t leave while my opponant can disengage to get his heal and his shorter cool downs back, then come back and kill me. If I had even the tiny heals from blood I could try to continue pressure without having to drop shroud.

Bhawb.7408:

Rennoko.5731:

How about a scaling siphon that increases with each consecutive hit within say 2 seconds, scaling up 10 times. Stun the necro, and you break the siphon chain. Let the chain go up to 10, and he is really stealing a lot of HP.

Of course I doubt we will ever see anything like that.

I’ve been thinking about something like that, and I think it could work, if they implemented it more like Vlad (from LoL)’s E. You have a self-buff that you stack up over time, and by keeping it up, it makes your siphons stronger.

That would also make some interesting counter play by other necros boon stripping/corrupting, or allowing it to get juicy enough to steal….

I like the improvements. The condition damage aggregation may even help reduce lag. I definitely like buffed vampiric traits. It should be very good for the carrion stat gear though I do not know if it will benefit cleric and other healing sets. At the very least, it should help draw off some of the popular berserker/rampager/assassin builds that go for high dps because of the Necro’s less attractive “sustain.” I do wish the profession had better group healing capability. Without stronger transfusion or WoB group heals, Necro’s are still better at AoE conditions so those skills are unlikely to be used regularly.

Arianna.7642:

What exactly do people want lifesteal to do? I will attest to it not being of the highest caliber currently, but is the Necro community expecting a 15 point investment into Blood to instantly make them invincible in a 1v1 scenario?

I obviously don’t speak for everyone, but after playing as a blood necro and only a blood necro for the past year, I want sustain that’s at – a minimum – on par with the sustain of what guardians and eles have in this game. IMHO a blood necro should have the greatest sustain of all; obviously at the expense of damage, of course.

I don’t want a one-hit-kill or invincibility, but neither am I satisfied with life stealing mechanics that only scale +6 points if going full healing power, a trait line that doesn’t work when using our profession-specific mechanic, is very situational, and requires a light armor class to become a front-line meleeist to achieve their sustain (though I’ll admit I’ve found that last point kind of a fun change-of-pace).

Have I made it work? Yes. Has it been fun jumping through all the hoops to make it work while watching other classes achieve better sustain with less effort? Not particularly.

Furthermore, it’s rather one-dimensional. I’m going to make comparisons to GW1. For those who would counter, “They’re different games. Get over it and move on!” my counter-counter is there’s nothing wrong with using proven mechanics from other games; even more so when the game you borrow from is the direct predecessor of the current game under discussion.

Life stealing in GW2 is – as Rennoko put it – binary:

“Hit the guy, get some HP, hit the guy again, get HP. Fails to be an interesting mechanic.”

Not unlike Colin Johanson’s famous I swung a sword… quote.

Sure, in GW1 you had your straight-forward binary life steals. Vampiric Gaze, for example; cast it and life steal a set amount of health. But there were spells which – both singly and in synergy with other skills – brought greater depth and variety to life stealing mechanics. A hex which would life steal every time an afflicted foe hit you, instead (Insidious Parasite). Other examples include spells which would steal health but also provide different effects based on specific criteria:

• gaining energy if suffering from a condition (Angorodon’s Gaze),
• inflicting weakness if the target foe is attacking (Blood of the Aggressor),
• bleeding yourself if your health is above 50% (Blood Drinker),
• stealing double if the target’s health is above 50% (Lifebane Strike),
• hexing a foe to cause their next spell to fail while stealing health when they cast (Mark of Subversion),
• life siphoning while removing boons (Strip Enchantment),
• stealing health from a minion (Taste of Death),
• DoT hexes which would heal the necro while degen-ing the target (Life Siphon and Life Transfer)

These are just a sampling of the variety of life stealing skills available to a necromancer in GW1. What’s more is this doesn’t even include a discussion of how those skills could be combined to synergize with other skills to even greater effect. A quick example; steal health while bleeding yourself with Blood Drinker, then follow up with more life siphoning using Angorodon’s Gaze while gaining energy due to suffering the self-inflicted bleeding.

And don’t even get me started on the complete lack of being able to use your health as a resource as existed in GW1 with skills like Blood Renewal, etc.

As I said, I don’t want invincibility as a blood necro. I believe, though, there exists a middle ground in that huge gulf between binary life siphoning and +6 extra health stealing when maxing the healing power stat as exists in GW2 and the richness, complexity, subtlety, variety, and flat-out superior sustain that was afforded blood necros in GW1.

That’s what I want.

Stx.4857:

If you make life steal too strong then it will make Necros way too strong when using omnomberry ghosts. Those things already heal a ton. The obvious solution is to nerf the food and make blood a worthy trait tree, but of course they wouldnt do that.

Currently, running knights gear and omnom ghosts with 20 in blood, I siphon so much health that I sometimes feel invincible in 1vX. The procs and healing from the dagger #2 channel is enough to take me from half health to full. And with dagger auto attacks and the right blood traits I can siphon a lot of HP consistently.

Doesnt work in Spvp because Anet said sorry no Knights gear.

Or just do what pretty much every necro suggested in beta, split the siphons to mutually excusive ones but make them strong enough to support it (so either basic hits siphon, crits siphon, conditions siphon or minions; all secondary like swap sigil runes and blood fiend dont count)..

Bhawb.7408:

Rennoko.5731:

How about a scaling siphon that increases with each consecutive hit within say 2 seconds, scaling up 10 times. Stun the necro, and you break the siphon chain. Let the chain go up to 10, and he is really stealing a lot of HP.

Of course I doubt we will ever see anything like that.

I’ve been thinking about something like that, and I think it could work, if they implemented it more like Vlad (from LoL)’s E. You have a self-buff that you stack up over time, and by keeping it up, it makes your siphons stronger.

An idea I had a long time ago was Masochism where healing CD or something behaved non-linearly depending upon damage taken per second – kind of like War’s adrenaline but dependent upon spike damage. Higher incoming dps = more healing. This is something for a grandmaster blood or death magic trait (preferably blood magic.)

The tanking capability of the Necromancer is good up to a point but there is little reward (especially for group members) for fully traiting the death or blood magic trees.

What I’d like out of the life siphons is a 1) viable mechanic that 2) works equally for all builds, rather than only for a small subset of builds (ie those with bucketloads of AoE or rapidly hitting channeled skills). In order to do that, you have to control how often it procs, which in turn also makes it a lot easier to balance. I’m fine with sinking a healthy amount of attribute points into healing power as well as a good amount of trait points into the appropriate line to make this work. Other classes that are currently good at playing the attrition game make the same sacrifice to gain their sustainability, so that’s simply how it should be.

I doubt we’ll see anything hugely inventive coming from a.net. Assuming what you want to design is an attrition class, I agree that time-dependent mechanics (ie traits/skills that build in power over time) would make perfect sense. But with the whole buff/debuff system being as overly simplified as it is, I don’t think a.net is likely to take that road. Traits that steal more life the longer you keep the engagement going sounds like an awesome idea. Unfortunately it also sounds like something that belongs in the context of custom made hexes and enchantments, rather than in the intentionally dumbed down world of boons and conditions. Deckbuilding (and the custom designed effects that made it possible) is unfortunately a shadow of its former self. We can hope that, with new skills and traits incoming, we will see some more advanced mechanics introduced into the game – but I’m not holding my breath.

ManaCraft.5630:

What I’d like out of the life siphons is a 1) viable mechanic that 2) works equally for all builds, rather than only for a small subset of builds (ie those with bucketloads of AoE or rapidly hitting channeled skills).

It’s ok for me if it only works on some builds, or even on one build alone (welcome, vampimancer), as long as it actually WORKS.

The Blood Magic line has been most players’ least favorite and these pre-release patch notes acknowledge that. The community has been pointing this out for an entire year but fixes in other areas of the profession like minions and dps more urgent. The Death Magic line is packed with desirable traits but BM seemed to be good only for minions and vampirism. The vitality line definitely needs something else besides improved siphons. The two grandmaster traits are not an easy sell considering the cost of traiting 30 in vitality. BM has not been attractive enough for group support, which is sort of expected of players foregoing some of their dps by placing points in the vitality line.

I think I will spend some time with a power/vit vampiric well spec so i have a fresher memory for comparison after the patch. Will probably make a Carrion set, too, I have not had one since last fall, but I also have a Tahlkora set to mess with. Going to try maxing the vampiric while not giving up too much dps.

So the general consensus is less about buffing Lifesteal, and more of a rework of the mechanics as a whole that allows it to work without being horribly broken? That was basically the conclusion that I’d come to, which made me wonder what players wanted; a rework at this point in time seems extremely unlikely, given the current track record of not doing sweeping changes, and I thought/think most players realize that.

I don’t think it needs a rework at all, just wee buffs to base siphons, with much stronger scaling with Healing Power.

Essentially what Leeching Venoms got?