Guild Wars 2

Some time has passed since SoV was released and wanted to compare notes on it. Like with Dhuumfire, I am trying to like it and figure out which situations it excels in but keep coming back to this:

SoV heals the Necro for about the same as Tase of Death when popping the Blood Fiend. In fact, it is very similar except for two things: CD is almost twice as long and most of the additional small heals from the signet’s stack will go to other party members.

The only possible use I can think of is against an Unshakable boss with a bleed cap and penchant for AoE-wiping minions but the BF’s damage can be increased and its CD decreased just like the signets. In addition, running a MM build can increase heal rate through Vampiric Master, toughness, and more while running all signets does nothing.

I want to like it and I understand there is a trade between healing and the dps improvement during its active phase but i Just do not see enough reward for SoV to displace other healing options

Thoughts, anyone?

It sucks in every situation, in every part of the game.

I honestly think that no fully optimized build will find use out of this signet. It can be built around for a build, but that build will not perform up to normal Necro standards in whatever it does.

It needs to be reverted back to its original idea: high risk/reward active, passive siphoning. It can be changed a bit to keep it from becoming too strong via limiters: can only proc up to X times per second (instead of a true ICD), stack limits on the active to keep from being too strong, etc.

But what needs to change:
1) No more full ICD on the passive (implement a max number of procs per second instead, much higher than 1)
2) Add damage back to the passive
3) Significantly lower ICD on the active (or remove it)
4) CD down to 30s
5) Mark should be instant cast and unblockable (healing on active stays at current cast time)

Balance numbers where appropriate, obviously passive healing will go down.

Imo it should be this:
Passive siphons health when hit, up to 3-5x max per second
Active has two parts
1) Applies mark and all stacks, unblockable, instant cast (stacks applied are 10+5*(number of allies up to max of 3)), removing stacks has 0.5s ICD (or none) no healing on active at all
2) Removes half of the current stacks, giving you the same healing as if they had been proc’d but dealing no damage, has cast time of current ability

It sucks completely even in MM build cause chances are as a necro with light armor no way to be immune to damage and ds already melts unless traited you never want to be hit.Who really looked at this and said yeh this well help necros!id love to hear there reasoning i could be wrong.

I like the idea of applying 25 stacks to a target. It gets around the Bleed cap to enable higher dps on the target; especially targets with defiant. It also gives an opportunity for all group members in combat with the target to claim small heals.

Unfortunately, as Bhawb pointed out, the cost of taking the signet is punishingly high. If the group heals were, maybe, 1k per hit off the stack, then the signet would be more attractive. WoB and ConC can easily exceed 6k for the necro.

What also bugs me is Necro has only one signet improvement trait. There is no bonus for running two signets instead of one so, as far as i am concerned, there is no possible signet build. One adept trait giving a universal CD reduction is not enough. There should be another trait giving additional CD reduction depending on the number of signets slotted.

i have found some uses actually (yeah still prefer CC but meh)
coe subject alpha…team is low on hp, pop it and they heal a bit
also useful against lava shaman in fractals
if a guy is downed and you pop it, he could potentially rally
extra damage!
if u use the 3might on heal run, the 3 might on signet use trait and sigil of battle + blood is power + signet of power you can reach 22 might stacks in 3-5 seconds

Pelopidas.2140:

i have found some uses actually (yeah still prefer CC but meh)
coe subject alpha…team is low on hp, pop it and they heal a bit
also useful against lava shaman in fractals
if a guy is downed and you pop it, he could potentially rally
extra damage!
if u use the 3might on heal run, the 3 might on signet use trait and sigil of battle + blood is power + signet of power you can reach 22 might stacks in 3-5 seconds

In the first scenario well of blood is better.
Second Scenario, it’s unlikely they will rez, the healing is not enough. Someone would have already had to be rezzing them.
Third scenario makes since, but you lose a lot for the 3 extra might stacks you get for popping that signet. Besides that an ele or engi could stack 10-15 might stacks for the group and then you’d already be at 25.

Good effort, but it is really hard to find a scenario where you actually benefit from this skill vs the other heals we have.

I think what I dont like about it the most is that its totally different from the rest of the siphon abilities. All of the rest reward you for getting as MANY hits as possible in and push you toward minions + dagger + WH which is fine and makes for a fun siphon build, they added this as if you wanted something more than the siphon you already had in BF. Which would be all well and good if siphons werent just plain BETTER with minions, the skill should have been scrapped entirely TBH but since we have this pile now the least they could do is revert it to something usable.

hey it has internal cooldown, you can only siphon 4 ticks no matter what

crazy right

Pelopidas.2140:

hey it has internal cooldown, you can only siphon 4 ticks no matter what

crazy right

The ICD applies to players, not the stack. Try it on a dragon and you will see the entire stack deplete in one second as everyone in the crowd claims one of them.