Guild Wars 2

How good is it with a life leech build?

Garbage.

The single worst heal in the game. Behind other terrible skills like skelk venom (which can provide group support), blood fiend (which heals for more per second), and other heals that are very situational (like defiant stance, and aed). Also note that all lifestealing builds that employ blood magic are terrible. Your better of taking other traits in every scenario because the small amount of damage and healing is never worth it.

The pve only Antitoxin heal is superior to the signet, it’s THAT bad.

If you actually see it in PvP – its GG.

But you see someone with it in PvE/wvw , you can be a nice person and tell the new player its not his fault that Anet shipped garbage.

Until the celestial condi meta goes away, it will continue to be terrible. If there aren’t a ton of condis on you, it can be used for a coordinated group spike.

Signet of vamp is my heal skill of choice in PVE O.o. you can already avoid almost all damage in a decent group, so i just take the extra dps. That logic does nto work in PVP. In pvp, signet of vamp is pretty bad.

The active heal itself is not that bad but the passive and to a lesser extent the casttime and the cooldown make this skill bad.

Against players the active is easy to counter, which causes the necro to lose a lot of the healing and damage. Also when you use the active you dont really want to go in DS for the next 5-6 seconds, otherwise you also lose a good chunk of the healing.

Now compare that to consume conditions, it has a good effect (heal+full condition clear) a decent cd and it doesnt hinder you to go into DS for the next 5-6 seconds. I think the winner is clear…

If Anet really wanted to make signet of vampirism more viable, they would atleast have to change the passive, which is by far its worst point. It should be a lifesteal (not a simple heal, though this is more a flavour thing) and the icd should by per enemy player not a global one (this point is the most important).

You’ll never get full mileage out of the active siphon effect. The full 25 stacks are only ever consumed if you have 5 different targets attacking the same player, and that situation should basically never come up in sPvP. And even that assumes that the target doesn’t use evasion or invulnerability skills to keep people from hitting them during that window.

Softspoken.2410:

You’ll never get full mileage out of the active siphon effect. The full 25 stacks are only ever consumed if you have 5 different targets attacking the same player, and that situation should basically never come up in sPvP. And even that assumes that the target doesn’t use evasion or invulnerability skills to keep people from hitting them during that window.

Right. which is why in SPVP, signet of vamp is a pretty awful skill. It cant function well in its intended role of being a hybrid heal/dps skill as its limited by the ICD and number or allies hitting the target. Even if you’re in a 3v3, call targets properly, and get your signet off, at best you get 6 stacks off each, so 18 stacks gone? assuming no blocks, no evades, and all focus? thats a lot of assumptions for not full damage being dealt out. In PVP the skill is just…not good.

Realize that a full 25 stacks consumed can deal almost 10k damage, meaning hitting them all would kill literally anyone. Its not meant to be fully removed, it is a huge additional damage spike on a single target.

Bhawb.7408:

Realize that a full 25 stacks consumed can deal almost 10k damage, meaning hitting them all would kill literally anyone. Its not meant to be fully removed, it is a huge additional damage spike on a single target.

Yes, but its only ever usefull in highly coordinated teams. So if you’re running with a good team/party, use it, but if you are on ur own, or dont know when or how to use it, avoid it?

It’s REALLY hard to use properly in pvp.

The only time you would land all 25 stacks is when you would have killed the person anyway. The only class that won’t either avoid or break out of a cc immobilize chain is a necro, and that’s the only way a team is going to use even 1/3 of those stacks. Engi will dodge twice gear shield, thief will port away or stealth, mes will port away or stealth, ele will invuln, port or dodge, ranger will block, stealth or dodge, Warrior might actually be susceptible to this, guard will just invuln.

Anyway, this really describes the problem with this skill, we are trying to rationalize it being so bad with the fact that it can deal decent damage if you use all the stacks. It’s a healing skill though so it’s role more than anything should be to heal, and it isn’t very good at that.

As a healing skill, it’s really not as bad as you make it out to be. Only need to consume 3 stacks to make it on-par with the average healing skill, and in a 1v1, that’s easy. Anything more than a 1v1 and then the damage plays a bigger role.

That said, as a sustain skill, it’s awful. The active is probably fine, but the passive really needs help.

I run this heal on my female Necro with a vampiric build. I have hopes that one day Anet will improve the concept a great deal more of course.

In open world PVE she can face tank a fair bit of damage but I have to be constantly managing all the available siphons, and attacking to get heals from both the damage taken and damage given.

It it nowhere near perfect, but I find it kind of fun to play in open world. I don’t do dungeons and have no plans to ever do them.

There seems to be no viable way to make this a good PVP build with it. The huge spike damage that zerker’s lay down can’t be repaired if they are highly mobile; all your siphons will miss or be interrupted the majority of the time. WvW in a large zerg would even be challenging because she has to be in melee range to be the most effective and the lack of stability for Necro makes that anything but fun.

For now my Vamp character is just a fun type open world toon until Anet reworks those traits and/or skills to land more effectively.

Bhawb.7408:

Garbage.

HOW DARE YOU compare Garbage to that thing….

I’ve tested it pretty thoroughly in PvP. It’s bad compared to Consume Conditions in almost all scenarios, but you do get more total healing from it over the course of a match.

Other than the problems already highlighted, you also have to spec for signet mastery and use sigil slots for purity/generosity…so that you can lose conditions.

Assuming you do all those things and use a non-meta life leech build, I can see it being beneficial. You have to give up too much though to make it even viable.

It was never good, got nerfed even though a select few used it . You’re better off using Consume Conditions as it has the best condition clearing skill in the game.

When did it get nerfed?

Although signet of vampirism is pretty bad, that’s not even what makes it so laughably bad.
The active is pretty decent actually and you can, as was said before, coordinate it for group spike damage as well as poping it along with other signets for might stacking. That being said one of your other heal skills is consume conditions which should be permanently welded to your bar at all times seeing as it will heal you for quite a bit on its own, but it also clears all conditions on you and heals you for more for each one cleared.

Blood fiend is meh seeing as it can die mid combat and then your heal is gone…. if you’re going for a siphon build i guess it would be good if you go all tank but unless you specifically build for minions consume conditions will outclass it by miles just because of the condi clearing.

I really can’t think of any situation wherein consume conditions isn’t at least on par with the other heals with is both because the other heals suck and because consume condis is really, really strong.

Bhawb.7408:

When did it get nerfed?

I don’t remember 100% but it was either it’s ability to damage structures or the damage it did in general because people would use it to help get doors down in wvw. So that’s a completely valid nerf and nothing to do with its viability as a heal skill, i think they also sortof changed how it works at some point too (in regards to the siphoning stacks and all)

People will complain about the nerf, but they didn’t really mess with the healing and you shouldn’t be taking a heal skill trying to do damage, that’s not what they’re for and literally no other heal in the game that i can think of has a direct damage component on it.

It would be nice if they’d maybe put the passive affect on a CD seperate to the active one so you don’t have to worry about your passive heal being down so long. Also they ought to make siphoning for necromancers better on the whole, right now it’s pretty abysmal all together, every other class with a siphon can do it better than necros can (skale venom, mug, and some other class with i’m too tired to remember what.)

Total changes on Signet of Vampirism since it’s release:

1. Can no longer be applied to objects. Done to prevent gatebreaking with the signet, but also meant that world bosses like Tequatl or Inquest Golem are immune.

2. Active stack duration increased from 5 to 6 seconds, making it easier to claim 25 stacks.

@CynicalFred: Arcane Radiance on Elementalists and Blood Fiend also have direct damage components, as does Detonate Healing Turret.

Ok wait. So we all agree that in pvp specifically, this skill is worthless. The question now is does it have any redeeming triats (meaning it should be balanced) or is it totally useless (so it should be scrapped and replaced). I, personally, think its quite good in PVE (dungeons specifically and event trains, not at tequatal and other world bosses of that sort). It does a fair bit of “free” damage and I rarely need heavy heals in pve. I can find other sources of adequate healing. So a lot of the suggestions here have been suggesting scrapping the skill, or parts of the skill that are useful in PVE if used properly.

I never take any of the other heals to dungeons, consume conditions is good, but if you have a good team, you usually dont need to bring your own condi clears. Condi clearing in dungeons is so situational you dont need to bring it. Which is why i really dont want to see this skill scrapped :\

I think this active component is perfectly fair, i think the active needs some fixing so that its a balanced skill.

For quick comparison the other classes passives are:

Warrior, healing signet: grant self regeneration
Guardian, signet of resolve: cure condis passivly
Engi, healing turret: its a turret that heals you? grants a water field and regeneration
ranger, water sprit? it only lasts for 60 seconds, not really a passive.
thief, signet of malice: heal when you attack
ele, signet of restoration: heal when you cast spells
mesmer, signet of ether: heal based every few seconds based on # of clones out.

ours is the only one that heals on receiving damage. Which might not be TERRIBLE if it healed for more. For example, mesmers have increased healing for each clone out from 340-980. If, similarly, our signet healed for that range based LF.

Or if instead of healing, it just granted passive life force regen since ANET treated LF as our actual health and skills anyways -.- might as well go all out on that DS idea in that case. (Plz dont :< )