Guild Wars 2

Cast time: 1-1/4 seconds
Recharge: 35 seconds (28 with Signet Mastery)
Range: 1,200
Internal Cooldown on passive: 1 second
Internal Cooldown on Active: 1 second (unique to each attacker)

At level 80, the following are the base values for the skill (tested by Heart of the Mists, refunding traits, and unequipping all armor and amulet):

Passive heal: 325
Active initial heal: 3,960
Active siphon heal: 392
Active siphon damage: 200

With 10 points into Spite and 10 points into Blood Magic (100 power and 100 healing power above base values)

Passive heal: 335
Active initial heal: 4010
Active siphon heal: 412
Active siphon damage: 207

Scaling ratios:
Passive heal: 10% healing power
Active initial heal: 50% healing power
Active siphon heal: 20% healing power
Active siphon damage: 7% power

Active siphon functions properly with Bloodthirst on tooltip (values are increased by 20%).

I dropped this signet in the first 10 minutes of using it. You will never see the end of a fight using this signet unless you maybe built around it.

Does it still have an ICD on the active? It didn’t say so, but I don’t want to waste my skill points on it if it does.

I didn’t test the actual function of the skill, just looked for the numbers.

EDIT: Yup. Active still has the ICD. Tested by using it on the target golem and using Ghastly Claws (axe 2) while watching the stacks of the debuff. Only 2 stacks were removed.

I cannot believe they kittening let this go.

All right, other than testing to see what happens in a 3-way engagement, I believe this is everything for cold facts about this skill.

Totally clueless. Anet is really trying to ruin their own game. Can’t believe such a pathetic “heal” managed to make it into the game, it is WORSE than ALL our other skills and they think people will actually use this pathetic excuse of a “heal”

They even bumped the CD up by 10. Depressing.

Heartlust.6140:

They even bumped the CD up by 10. Depressing.

15* seconds iirc

Had my first soloq game with the trollbuild, was actually a decent game. Dunno if carried by team but the signet felt ok.
Also it seems like marking can’t be dodged but not 100% sure and i was once healdenied either by beeing blinded and or headshot and it went to full cd.

Testing this healing skill again, I recommend nobody waste their skill points on this skill if they didn’t do so already, including those of you who think you can build around this skill. It’s so easy to get overwhelmed by any and every kind of damage in this game with the crappy heals.

It doesn’t help that the passive doesn’t count as a siphon so it isn’t affected by bloodthirst.

Yep just as I thought its as useful as a chocolate fireguard and even then I can find more uses for a chocolate fireguard.

And by looking at the news on the main page next patch isn’t till nearly the end of January so if we are lucky it will get sorted then. But since its Necro, check back in a couple of years time and it might actually become a viable healing signet to use but don’t hold your breath on that one.

Right now the Necro in GW2 is feeling as welcome as a fart in a spacesuit either that or they assume we are that good they can throw any junk at us and we will make it work.

I put it in a straight pure siphon build, vamp gear and all, and hopped into a scarlet invasion. It was downright frightening, and not in the way you might think. My survivability actually went down a good 50% using this. And yes I attributed at least the first 15 minutes to me not being used to the skill, but it’s pretty simplistic, doesn’t take long to learn. It also doesn’t take lnog to see how utterly ineffective this skill is at…well anything. You will never notice the passive siphons. I don’t think anything in this game will ever hit you for that low except maybe a standard mesmer clone with no traits. As for the active, you can see a small boost in healing, but again it doesn’t take long for it to get swallowed up to the point you realize you just wasted a heal slot. Let’s put it this way: I was getting more healing from my actual life siphons from the traits than I was from my actual heal.

I disabled the heal and put consume back in near the end of the invasion and guess what? I noticed no difference, no I take that back, I noticed I actually survived because I had a heal when I needed it. I had very high hopes for this, and was actually really excited and figured I could build around it easily enough, but nah. Was a huge letdown. Sorry guys, save your skill points. Trust me.

Well, thanks for the info guys, my skill points are safe for now.

Might want to add in it is unavoidable. Goes through Block/evade. Can’t proc charges on a blocking or evading target, but the effect still hits them.

Think DS 5.

The crazy thing is it never needed to be so complicated.

A simple, siphon on hit passive and a siphon on hit active for the group would have had most Necro’s rejoycing.

Rennoko.5731:

Might want to add in it is unavoidable. Goes through Block/evade. Can’t proc charges on a blocking or evading target, but the effect still hits them.

Think DS 5.

The effect of stripping stacks is unblockable? Or the marking?

Bhawb.7408:

Rennoko.5731:

Might want to add in it is unavoidable. Goes through Block/evade. Can’t proc charges on a blocking or evading target, but the effect still hits them.

Think DS 5.

The effect of stripping stacks is unblockable? Or the marking?

Marking is unAVOIDABLE.

Stack proc requires a hit, which doesn’t work against block or dodge.

I won’t even buy it until it gets changed. This is pathetic A-net.

i put on full soldier gear and 0/0/30/30/10 wells traited with reapers protection, all wells equipped except suffering, plague elite and signet it was working “ok”.

I don’t think it works without wells, d/d and staff, toughness runes or other traitlines though. And you’re still ping ponged if it comes to that, but you can hold out pretty long compared to other builds I’ve tried.

I have no idea why it worked I didn’t even read skill desc properly hehe.. Probably protection + blindness/weakness spam

jalmari.3906:

i put on full soldier gear and 0/0/30/30/10 wells traited with reapers protection, all wells equipped except suffering, plague elite and signet it was working “ok”.

I don’t think it works without wells, d/d and staff, toughness runes or other traitlines though. And you’re still ping ponged if it comes to that, but you can hold out pretty long compared to other builds I’ve tried.

I have no idea why it worked I didn’t even read skill desc properly hehe.. Probably protection + blindness/weakness spam

I can assure you it wasn’t the signet keeping you alive. Blood fiend would likely keep you alive better than this silly thing :P Not to mention CC.

Well guys – at least ANet didn’t nerf our survivability skills while handing us this flaming pile of crap that does nothing for survivability

cough weakening shroud cough

This whole update was like the WvW S1 chest—-Useless.

Is it true that minions can’t trigger the active part of the signet? I was thinking that it could be used as a way to heal them.

Been soloqueing until now with it and do think its pretty decent. Expected the worst and am kinda impressed.
30/0/0/25/15, zerker with valk gem, 5/6vamp +1 divinity, d/d a/f with blood/force. WoS, FW, PS, golem. Just went full kitten with the life stealing vibe. Got some good 1v1s going vs hambow, shattermes, mediguards, spirit ranger, dhummnec and some bunkerish d/d ele and some builds i forgot. Never felt “outclassed” and didn’t miss CC much.
Also marking + Spinal Shivers + Chill of Death really hit some guards pretty hard.
I like.
Btw: with 470 HP signet heals on hit for ~370 thats pretty close to HS.

ThePurpleGhost.5216:

Is it true that minions can’t trigger the active part of the signet? I was thinking that it could be used as a way to heal them.

Allied players

Maybe the reason why Necros aren’t allowed to heal that well is because they’ve been studying/obsessed with death so much that they forgot what life is like.

Unpredictability.4086:

Maybe the reason why Necros aren’t allowed to heal that well is because they’ve been studying/obsessed with death so much that they forgot what life is like.

Obviously not that much, otherwise Death Shroud would be better.

Guys, Signet of the locust got stealth re buffed, now you can get a nice 7-9k heal with it pre 60 seconds if you get 5 targets… utility being a better heal than a heal for pve, how ironic.

Okay, so; just some heal math I sent to one of the devs, in case anyone wanted some easy-to-compare numbers.

“The problem is:
Passive wise, we’re looking at 325 healing per second under OPTIMAL conditions (that optimal condition being, getting hit, which… isn’t very optimal in the first place), whereas the warrior’s base is 392 every second on the second with no draw backs. Alternatively, the Mesmer one which is about 330 hps with 3 illusions, which in spvp is relatively easy to maintain on most popular Mesmer builds, and this would tick every 3 seconds without any counter restrictions (meaning you can actively gain hp over time if you avoid being hit/kite).

Then, for the use.
The cooldown is way too long (35 seconds untraited), but we’ll assume the signet is traited for the heal. It’s a 4000 heal for a 28 second cooldown on the highest HP pool class in the game with the fewest defensive measures. The “use” portion, while it has a few failsafes can still fail to mark a target under certain circumstances, aside from the long cast time for the very weak beginning heal. After that, due to its 1 second ICD, you can manage to steal over 5 seconds 1.2k more health. That’s a 5.2k heal on a 28 second cooldown, 35 second cooldown untraited, in which time, the signet passive obviously isn’t working. This is the same for any party member, this “support heal” at best can give 1.2 healing to others (or slightly more with healing power, which, not many necromancers run healing power because in most cases our scaling with healing power isn’t worth the investment). This leads me to 2 secondary gripes:

1. Life stealing is not a support role. Life stealing is a tanky/aggressive damage niche. Put yourself at risk/the thicket of battle to BENEFIT (not try to get hit and die because you’re not healing enough). It really should support life stealing traits (which the passive doesn’t even improve with bloodthirst), and be for life stealing necros, which are not support necros.

2. Say someone did want to support. This isn’t the heal to do it with.
With 1500 Healing power:
The “on hit” heals for 692, realistically in 5 seconds (Assuming the target doesn’t move at all…) you get 4 siphons off, for 2768 healing, from 1 main target and best case scenario.

Well of blood, traited can be a 32 second cooldown heal that instantly heals the necromancer for (Again with 1500) 6400. This also triggers an instant heal for 725, so right off (and for .25 second fewer cast time) the necromancer heals themselves for 7152, and 725 aoe in the well, and then that amount every second for 10 second and provides a light field.
Assuming best conditions, this is an AoE heal for 7957 healing with a long light field and a self heal for 14375."

Andele.1306:

Guys, Signet of the locust got stealth re buffed, now you can get a nice 7-9k heal with it pre 60 seconds if you get 5 targets… utility being a better heal than a heal for pve, how ironic.

7-9k? That seems like a super buff. I may have to consider using that in my build over spectral walk. Considering the only times I die normally are when 3-4 people gang up on me.

They made the signet bad, so it would draw atention from weakening shroud nerf. I think they got us

Flumek.9043:

They made the signet bad, so it would draw atention from weakening shroud nerf. I think they got us

They learned from the Putrid Mark fiasco. Instead of just stealth nerfing things, they tell us about the nerf, but do something else so enraging that it takes our attention away.

Kind of like when my dad told me the best way to get over the pain of an injury is to hurt something else worse so that pain makes you forget. Solid advice.

Nay of the Ether.8913:

You will never notice the passive siphons. I don’t think anything in this game will ever hit you for that low except maybe a standard mesmer clone with no traits.

Sadly, this will probably be the case across all game modes. When a player is going to die, its never because he took too many small periodic damage hits, it will always be because he took a boatload of burst in a small time period, and that’s where you need a real heal. At the times this passive is doing something, you don’t really need it, and when you do need a big heal for a ‘oh crap’ moment, this offers nothing.

Using our heal slot is not the place where they should be trying to shore up, let alone fix, our broken life steal mechanic.

Meanwhile let’s give the warrior another invulnerable for their heal! I don’t get how the devs can be so oblivious at times.

Pendragon.8735:

Meanwhile let’s give the warrior another invulnerable for their heal! I don’t get how the devs can be so oblivious at times.

Invulnerability skills should never have been added to the game to begin with. It was the source of dozens of balance problems in GW1, where elementalists and assassins would solo entire dungeons while invulnerable to everything. And apparently, no lessons were learned from this mistake. It may even be worse now than it was in GW1.

But I don’t think they are oblivious. They just really REALLY like the warrior and the guardian. If some of them mained a necromancer, we wouldn’t be treated this way.

Pendragon.8735:

Using our heal slot is not the place where they should be trying to shore up, let alone fix, our broken life steal mechanic.

They literally had a perfect niche skill to use with Blood builds, but didn’t. The ability to have a no ICD flat damage reduction really helps with a build that has decent self-sustain already, plus the passive damage puts offensive pressure back on the person hitting you. It is everything that compliments a Blood Magic build.

Even the active was a solid idea. High risk, high reward, it was basically super-vampire mode (dracula, not edward), where everything you normally did with your build was just in overdrive, and given to your teammates. Again, solid idea.

But they screwed it up.

Stx.4857:

Andele.1306:

Guys, Signet of the locust got stealth re buffed, now you can get a nice 7-9k heal with it pre 60 seconds if you get 5 targets… utility being a better heal than a heal for pve, how ironic.

7-9k? That seems like a super buff. I may have to consider using that in my build over spectral walk. Considering the only times I die normally are when 3-4 people gang up on me.

Not really, it was bugged a while ago and instead of only hitting and healing of the 5 targets it hit, it healed off 5 targets around the main 5 targets it heal, potentially healing for like 14k in AC and CoF, then it got fixed to like 5-6k then bloodlust got nerfed nerfing it to 4k on 5 targets and now it kinda got rebuffed (which i dont think is intentional) that with bloodlust (well 20 into BM) it heals for 1.2k pre target and on a soldier amulet and zerker gem with 15 in spite too, it heals from 18k health to 24k at the test dummies in pvp and on a full pve build (so quite a bit more power and a bit more healing) in the midst of combat in cof i healed for 8.xk hp.
And unlike the signet of vampirism it has a useful passive for necros while its not on cd.

P.S. It also no longer misses if not targeted, so the red targeting line under itshould be removed a-net. Not sure if this is actually new since i last tested it before blood and madness but still.

Bhawb.7408:

But they screwed it up.

All the while yelling, “It’s for your own good!”

Tried it in WvW open combat

the basic idea of this signet is fine, but in real practicing i’m still finding Consume condition way better, well actually if you want to support your commander you can give him transfusion which is safer.

to be honest the first impression about this signet is not good at all i may try other scenarios and check where exactly this signet could shine

hopefully more testing and calculations can give us clear idea in future

I have been told by a few people in game that there is no ICD on the active. And let’s be honest, I’m too lazy to test it.

Any brave soul want to check for me?

Bhawb.7408:

I have been told by a few people in game that there is no ICD on the active. And let’s be honest, I’m too lazy to test it.

Any brave soul want to check for me?

There is, its character specific and whats worst it counts the cast second, so unless you got wells, locust swarm or marks triggering just as you cast, or you only get 4/5 triggers you can proc.

Andele.1306:

Bhawb.7408:

I have been told by a few people in game that there is no ICD on the active. And let’s be honest, I’m too lazy to test it.

Any brave soul want to check for me?

There is, its character specific and whats worst it counts the cast second, so unless you got wells, locust swarm or marks triggering just as you cast, or you only get 4/5 triggers you can proc.

I was messing around today with it and 4 tick is all I could get out of it.

In its current state it is effectively an anti team support tool because your team will have to pick you up a lot more if you use it, thus not only losing their dps output but making them sitting ducks.

Because Necros totally already get didn’t focus fired a lot or anything silly like that, oh no.

Just managed to pick myself up off the floor after laughing at this joke of a signet.

25 skill points for what?!?! New players are going to pick up this skill thinking it is a good skill but WHAT THE HELL HITS FOR 300? Protection is better… Is we get 100 blades to the face… we heal for about 600 out of the 10k, WHAT A DIFFERENCE.

Anyone using this signet will get tunneled because that Necromancer will be down a condition removal and only heal 4k (lol)

The use effect on the signet isn’t even unblockable (from what I’ve read) plus vs thief or guardian you’ll have a hard time landing it due to dodges and Aegis.

If they removed the heal it wouldn’t be missed. as long as they reimbursed our 25 skill points. There is not a place in Guild Wars 2 where this is useful, the kind of move I would expect from BLIZZARD

#rantover #yolo #swag #par

I’m simply refusing to buy it. I encourage my fellow necromancers to do the same. We should send a clear message.

The worst thing is that Life Siphon is one of the few necro-specific toys, that we could (and I guess, a lot of us really would try out to) enjoy, if it was at least somewhat useful. And to be fair, this skill could have been useful as well, if it was scaled properly.

I thought the basic mindset behind balancing is about making each profession equally dangerous to others (even if each should have stronger or weaker matchups), or just thinking about that what does it bring to the table in a dungeon/fractal group. When only 2-3 professions are welcomed in high level fractals, and theres a “go zerker or go home” mentality all around in PvE, then you should probably have to rethink one or few basic things about the game.

Shouldn’t versatility and creativity concerning build designs be helped and encouraged?

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

I’m simply refusing to buy it. I encourage my fellow necromancers to do the same. We should send a clear message.

OCD.

I can promise that I’ll never use it though! It will be hard resisting the temptation of that 300hp heal on an ICD, but I think I’ll manage!

Bellamy.9860:

Had my first soloq game with the trollbuild, was actually a decent game. Dunno if carried by team but the signet felt ok.
Also it seems like marking can’t be dodged but not 100% sure and i was once healdenied either by beeing blinded and or headshot and it went to full cd.

Tried your build in spvp and i switched it out for CC, iow went back to my basic zerker build and ditched the siphons, i can honestly say you have to know how to play and have huge balls to run full zerker siphon in spvp as a necro.

I noticed all the evades /stealth and other target reset mechanics making me waste all possible healing i would get from hitting something.. the animation and huge red dot doesn’t help either.

I am struggling to get this signet to be of any use..

Merlin Dyfed Avalon.5046:

Tried your build in spvp and i switched it out for CC, iow went back to my basic zerker build and ditched the siphons, i can honestly say you have to know how to play and have huge balls to run full zerker siphon in spvp as a necro.

I noticed all the evades /stealth and other target reset mechanics making me waste all possible healing i would get from hitting something.. the animation and huge red dot doesn’t help either.

I am struggling to get this signet to be of any use..

Fleshwurm helps a lot if you overextend/are in a bad spot but thats true no matter what heal you pick.
Also the heal is somewhat mostly used for sustain(passive is close to healing sig) and offensive, nuke down target especially guard/war. In terms of healing the active is more of a last resort, the bulk of the healing comes from the passive.

Burst heavy speccs, d/p thief especially, really give a tough fight. I had most success with going balls out dagger auto’ing them. Casts, pretty much anything except axe2, lose you the matchup b/c of too little pressure and easily avoidable. This is about making them disengage/Shadow refuge which gives time to move away/set up wurm.

Andele.1306:

Guys, Signet of the locust got stealth re buffed, now you can get a nice 7-9k heal with it pre 60 seconds if you get 5 targets… utility being a better heal than a heal for pve, how ironic.

That’s just it, right now you pretty much have to run signet of locust with signet of vampirism because vampirism alone can’t get the job done. Having 5 enemies within 480 range of you usually means a stomp is coming. At least locust can make full use of siphoning unlike vampirism’s passive. I will say this, that 3/4 sec cast does help when you are surrounded by 5 enemies and should only be used when vampirism is on cooldown.