Guild Wars 2

Superior Sigil of Blood : 30% Chance on Critical: Steal Health (This effect cannot trigger more than once every 2 seconds)
Superior Sigil of Restoration : Gain Health on Killing a foe.
Omnomberry Pie : 66% chance to steal life on critical.
Vampiric : Siphon health whenever you hit a foe.
Vampiric Precision : Siphon health whenever you critical hit.

Does anyone know if equipping both those sigils on main/offhand share a cooldown, and if it is possible or worth it for a necro to try some sort of life steal build for wvw?

Killing stuff/people as fast as possible is more likely to save your life then vampiric builds. True story

I should add that this is for surviving in large wvw zerging.

Chain cc/cc locking stuff/people is more likely to save your life then vampiric builds. Real talk

Running away/ hiding from an enemy Zerg is more likely to save your life then a vampiric build. No kitten!

In short. Dont go vampiric.

I’ve never been much of a life steal user, but from what I’ve heard, they’re simply too weak to be worth taking. So it’s probably not worth it, though I’ve seen a level 11 do just fine dueling 80s. The moral of the story is that if you REALLY want to do life steals, go ahead. Just keep in mind a different build would probably make things a lot easier for you.

As for the sigils, usually sigils seem to share cooldowns (on swap and on crit ones do, for instance), but on kill sigils like bloodlust still work. With the heal on kill sigil it could go either way really, so I’d say your best bet is to test it yourself in the mists.

We have the Vampiric skills of #TeamEdward, when we should have the skills of #TeamCountDracula.

Did I just get penta-ninja’d? Have I accidentally wandered into the thief forums again..? :P

sigil of blood over sigil of restoration because you have to kill something to get the heal from resto and it’s only around 670 points where blood (heals for 450 +1 for every 10 points of Heal Power AND deals 450 damage) can happen a few times during a fight as it’s on a 2 sec cooldown and if you are AoE’ing in a large WvW fight you’re going to crit something.

Pretty sure they will both trigger as one is on crit hit and other is on death. As for using leech traits, they are not very big, 40 points from vampiric traits. As others have said there are better options, but I wouldn’t discount the food/sigils.

Parasitic Bond, first spite trait, heals for 950 on kill and is affected by heal power so I choose that over resto.

Necro Vampire below

I tried a pseudo-minion master build with a lot of life stealing, thinking that the life I steal on my hits, plus the life my minions steal when they hit, should heal me very well.

In short, it doesn’t. In long, it was fun.

In PvE it was glorious: I almost never had to heal myself. But in dungeons you are almost on your own, since most bosses will one-shot all your minions with any AoE. In WvW I held my ground, killing two or three players at once, sometimes, but other times dying fairly fast. I suppose it depends if your minions choose to attack the same target that you did.

Anyway, the healing that the life steals give me was ok, but not very strong. With that I mean that normally it will maintain you healed up, but it can’t help very long against strong attacks.

All sigils share a cooldown on processing. As others have stated, Sigil of Restoration probably isn’t worth it. Parasitic Bond heals for more when something dies and you’ll likely heal more over the long run from taking duel Sigils of Blood than a Sigil of Blood/Sigil of Restoration when wielding duel weapons. This is because if the first sigil fails to process, it gives you another chance at life stealing with the second sigil.

I’ve played a vamp necro since shortly after launch and have about 2,600 hours put into it now. I play WvWvW almost exclusively, with the odd dungeon run or Fractal thrown into the mix from time to time.

Is life stealing viable? Yes, when played correctly. Are there options that will do more damage? Most certainly. That said, if you enjoy life stealing builds, I would still recommend you try it out. This will give you time to master the build when it’s in a less-than-ideal state. Though Arenanet has been slow to make improvements to the Blood Magic line, I do believe they are coming. When they arrive, you will be that much better at playing a vampiric build if you learn it now in a sub-optimal state.

It’s hardly a trash build, though. I have very good survivability; both in WvWvW and dungeons. I’m by no means being carried by the party and it’s usually me saving them from wipes and not the other way around. Now, with the recent Deathshroud nerf, that changes things a bit in PvE; but that’s true for all necro builds and not unique to vampires.

I would recommend wells over minions in WvWvW as minions tend to die too quickly to AoE (possible exception being a small camp raiding party). Consider building for precision and taking Vampiric Precision over Vampiric Master (assuming you only go 20 points into Blood Magic rather than 30); you’ll potentially do more direct damage.

If you’re serious about the build, you have to be aggressive with it. Your sustain comes from doing as many hits as you possibly can in the shortest amount of time in an effort to keep your life siphoning constantly processing. Emo vampires that sit in the backline plinking away with an odd hit here and an odd hit there in the hopes of preying on the weak need not apply. You are going to be a shock troop, frontline meleeist if you want this build to work; think vampire Charr-style. Dagger and warhorn are your friends; Locust Swarm is amazing for a life siphoning build in the middle of a mob.

Lastly, buy Candied Dragon Roll rather than buying or crafting Omnomberry Ghosts. The roll is cheaper, even after taking the difference in durations into account (20 minutes for roll, 45 minutes for ghost). Use Master Maintenance Oil to further boost your precision.

I use to run full wells with bloodthirst, vampiric precision and vampiric rituals and used blood, corruption, suffering and darkness wells. Now I’m mixing in minions a bit as Vampiric Precision heals for 51 a crit while minions heal for 114 with bloodthirst/vamipirc master. Shadow Fiend and flesh Golem hit at a rate of 1.5 seconds. Still debating if I’ll use Blood Fiend, it works with Vampiric Master trait and heals more over time than using any other heal.

I agree with the other posters, the healing can be great and in different aspects of the game you will never drop under 90% while other areas leeching will not outheal the incoming dps. Take it for what it’s worth. Add in a little to help with your survivability.

Edit: great thing is we can swap out our utilites.

Took another look at sigils on GW2 Wiki and spotted Sigil of Leeching which heals for 975 on next hit after weapon swapping (9 second cooldown). Put one on two weapons, you can heal 975 every 9 seconds.

Streets.2705:

Took another look at sigils on GW2 Wiki and spotted Sigil of Leeching which heals for 975 on next hit after weapon swapping (9 second cooldown). Put one on two weapons, you can heal 975 every 9 seconds.

There are pros and cons to this when compared to a Sigil of Blood. The pro arguments are it’s a guaranteed heal of 975, it’s on demand (when swapping weapons), and there are no additional dependencies (such as Sigil of Blood’s requirement of a scoring a critical hit).

The con argument is the healing is finite; it does not scale with healing power like Sigil of Blood nor are there opportunities for additional healing if certain requirements are met.

Assume you’re already at 100% health or have received less than 975 points of damage. A swap to a weapon with this sigil results in wasted healing. Though one would strive to avoid this, stuff happens; a finger slips and presses the wrong key or button, you need to swap to the other weapon set to access its skills for a specific scenario, etc. You are now locked out from benefiting from that heal again for 10 to 20 seconds (depending on whether you’ve equipped it on one or both weapon sets, respectively).

Sigil of Blood, on the other hand, gives you the chance to life steal once every 2 seconds (cool down per the tooltip; however, it appears the cool down is actually 5 seconds). Though this requires a critical hit and then another roll to see if the 30% chance to steal processes or not, odds are you’re going to process that sigil every time it’s off cool down if you run a precision build combined with a necro’s multiple sources of AoE. This isn’t the guaranteed healing of Sigil of Leeching, but offers the potential to siphon more often and – cumulatively – heal for more over the long run.

Furthermore, it’s less vulnerable to the con mentioned above for Sigil of Leeching. If you siphon at a point where your health is already at full, the Sigil of Blood won’t benefit you any more than Sigil of Leeching. With it’s lower internal cool down, though, Sigil of Blood gives you another opportunity to heal when you may need it whereas Sigil of Leeching would still be on cooldown. Lastly, Sigil of Blood’s siphoning scales with healing power.

This isn’t to promote one over the other. Sigil of Leeching is guaranteed healing, of a consistent amount, on a known timer, and under player control. Sigil of Blood requires making critical hits and then having to make yet another roll of the dice even after you crit to process it. However, it has the potential to heal for more than Sigil of Leeching. It’s the choice between a lower risk/lower reward versus higher risk/higher reward.

Yes they share CD main/offhand.

All together, they don’t give you as much life on hit return, as a Thief or a Ele’s #6 signet’s life on hit, even without them gearing any healing power.

Minions return life on hit with 50% extra trait, works fine until you get somewhere scary enough for your minions to die. Blood Fiend is even worse choice as he doesn’t heal out of combat, even tho they ninja patched your other minions to do so. (Unless there was another ninja patch I didn’t notice)

Dev’s in live streams have giggled & said, yeh, vamp’s totally useless.

Oh, they did add ‘heal power affects it’ on the balance patch. But if you gear every pice of gear to +Heal Power, it’s +6 heals bigger.

Sorry, it was once my dream too…