Guild Wars 2

It’s been a little while since anyone’s commented on it, but this still seriously needs to be changed. With the update coming up soon that’s nerfing dhuumfire, I think that we could use a buff. And since this is one of the saddest skills the necromancer has, we ought to have this skill improved.

In my opinion, and in the opinion of most others, this signet is still a letdown. It only works in certain scenarios, not to mention it doesn’t really siphon health on passive; it only negates a little bit of it, with a super annoying 1 second cooldown. And while the active is alright, why would you EVER choose this over consume conditions??? And no, I’m not talking about that one time here, or that one time there…I’m saying that generally, consume conditions works waaaay better.

So, with all of that in mind, let’s stay positive and try to come up with some ideas for this thing before the update!

I already have one:

Signet of Vampirism: rename to Signet of Grenth.

Passive: Regenerate health based on the amount of life force you have.
(1<lf<25%=90hp regen, 26<lf<50%=200hp regen, etc, effect increases with amount of life force you have)
Active: Heal yourself, and siphon health from nearby allies. If no one is struck, gain life force.
Base health is 4,000. Siphon healing is approx 500. Life force gained if not struck: 30%

Charr don’t follow gods, Norn see them as spirits (Grenth would be spirit of death), and Sylvari have no real clue what the heck they are, so the name would need to be something different.

Honestly, the signet doesn’t need a total rework to be good. The ICD on the active has to go, however (it’s already limited by the 25 stacks). The passive, bare minimum, needs to be a per-attacker ICD, not total. Ideally, the passive ICD goes away entirely and numbers get tweaked (such as a max heal of X% of a hit’s damage, so mesmers don’t whine about how they “can’t beat” a necro with it)

Assuming the source it legit, it appears Signet of Vampirism will change to become:

This skill’s passive effect now siphons health from foes when struck on a 1 second cooldown. The active effect no longer has a cooldown and summoned allies are able to benefit from the active effect. The active effect’s life siphon damage has been decreased by 10% to compensate.

Source is the patch notes pposssible (sic) thread. There’s no source in that source, though, so it could just be speculation.

Given the “patch notes possible” is about half notes that were already implemented, I’m not inclined to believe it.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Given the “patch notes possible” is about half notes that were already implemented, I’m not inclined to believe it.

Sadly, that may very well be reason enough to believe the “patch notes possible” is legit. Hey, if they can shuttle around the numbers such that there’s no appreciable increase to life siphoning while loudly proclaiming how much they’ve improved life siphons, I wouldn’t put it past them to try to take credit for “patching” something that already exists.

“Hey, guys! We’ve improved your marks. They’ve gone from 180 radius to 360 diameter!!! Isn’t that great?!?!?”

I have to agree with Drarnor, we’re not really sure what’s going to happen yet, so let’s not jump to any conclusions. Let’s just focus on getting some new ideas down for this thing.

The “possible” patch notes idea for the signet doesn’t seem that bad, but since the legitimacy is questionable, I’m not really sure what to say….

Agreed.

I’m actually very level-headed. The ascerbic and sarcastic tone I take in my posts is more a persona than a personality trait. I’ve tried – along with most everyone else on this sub-forum – to be respectful and reasonable in bringing our grievances to the attention of the devs going on 1 and 1/2 years now.

But when those concerns fall on deaf ears, bugs present at launch still persist, inexplicable nerfs are thrown at as from left field, and there’s a complete disconnect between the stated design philosophy of the class versus how it actually plays, one eventually comes to the conclusion that the devs – for whatever reason – are not going to engage us in rationale discourse.

So maybe it takes being a gadfly to get some attention. That probably won’t work either. But, hey, at least I no longer expend energy trying to remain calm in the face of the stonewalling we receive on a regular basis.