Guild Wars 2

I decided to do a breakdown for the siphoning traits to show primarily how bad of shape they are in. Lots of math ahead, so fair warning.

First, the parameters of the breakdown. I used this build. I decided to first take the skills in the build and calculate the hits-per-second of cast. So, Life Siphon, for example, hits 9 times in 3.5 seconds of casting for 2.57 h/sc.

In order from highest to lowest:
Locust Swarm: 30 h/sc
Life Siphon: 2.57 h/sc
dagger auto chain: 1.9 h/sc
Well of Suffering: 24 h/sc
Well of Corruption: 24 h/sc
Well of Darkness: 24 h/sc

The three wells, of course, are there to take advantage of Vampiric Rituals.

So, let’s break it down over a minute against a single, unavoiding target. The h/sc breakdown is important, as that helps us determine how much we can proc those traits. Fractions of a proc will be dropped to compensate for aftercasts.

Each trait heals the following amount per-proc (identical damage dealt):
Vampiric: 44
Vampiric Precision: 55
Vampiric Rituals: 69

Since Locust Swarm has the highest h/sc, we want to use it as much as possible. Thus, it starts the rotation. It also takes priority over other skills if they are off cooldown simultaneously. Given the 24.5 second cycle, we can get 2.45 cycles in per minute , with casts at the 0, 25, and 49.5 marks. This means the third locust swarm gets 6 ticks. for a total of 36. Thus, Locust Swarm will siphon an average of 2574 health/minute.

For the rest, no order is important, as re-arranging them does not alter the total procs/minute. Life Siphon is next. Starting at the .5 second mark, we want to use it every 15.5 seconds. This means we can manage to get 4 casts of Life Siphon in one minute (the last one starting at the 50 second mark, since it has to start after Locust Swarm’s 49.5 cast). Life Siphon thus delivers 36 hits/minute as well, siphoning an average of 2574 health/minute (not counting its own effect).

Now on to the wells. While the dagger auto is higher, it doesn’t proc Vampiric Rituals. I will do a second comparison leaving the wells out later.

Well of Suffering, due to shortest recharge, is the primary well cast. Cast first at the 4 second mark, it gets cast twice in the minute (second time at the 39.25 second mark), hitting 12 times with an average of 6 crits. Thus, it siphons 1686 health/minute

Well of Corruption also gets cast twice, at the 4.25 second mark and the 44.5 second mark. Siphons are identical to well of suffering (1686 health/minute).

Well of Darkness cannot crit, but gets cast at the 4.5 second mark and the 54.75 second mark. It siphons 1243 health/minute.

The rest of the time is made up of dagger auto attacks. Given the cycle time of the chain is 2.1 seconds, and we spend 17 seconds casting other skills in a minute, we get off 20.4 chains, or 82 hits/minute. This siphons 5863 health/minute.

Big numbers. A bit surprising that, in one minute, we siphon 15,626 health from a single target. This breaks down to 260.43 health/second. Which is just barely more than Regeneration at the same healing power gives (251 health/second).

That’s right. Perfect use of every siphon trait with mainhand dagger we have results in just barely more healing/second than just sitting on Staff spamming Mark of Blood on cooldown. And spamming Mark of Blood takes a lot less investment while not caring if the enemy blocks, blinds, or dodges.

But what if we increase the number of training golems (because that is the only thing that would stand there) that we are hitting to two or more?

Well, in that case, we get no additional benefit from Life Siphon. In a true scenario, you would still want to be using Life Siphon because it alone is providing more healing than all of your traits combined (16,416 over a minute with the same build), but since we are only worried about the traits proccing, we will actually drop it from the rotation entirely, since doubled dagger auto h/sc is higher than Life Siphon’s. This means 6.6 more dagger autos for a total of 27 cycles.

Thus, we have 72 hits with Locust Swarm (5148 total), 216 hits with dagger auto (15444 total), 20 hits with Well of Suffering (3372 total), 20 hits with Well of Corruption (3372 total), and 20 hits with Well of Darkness (2486 total) for a total of
29822 health/minute, or 497.03 health/second. Not terrible, but only works on two training golems and requires waaaay more investment than anything else that gives similar healing/second.

We up it to 3 targets and our optimal proc rotations don’t change. However, dagger auto has hit its cap. The gain here is much smaller than before. 108 hits with Locust Swarm (7722 total), 216 dagger auto hits (15444 total), 30 Well of Suffering (5058 total), 30 hits with Well of Corruption (5058 total), 30 hits with Well of Darkness (3729 total). Against 3 targets in the perfect situation, we get 37011 health/minute, or 616.85 health/second Each target beyond the second will add the same amount (until the 5 target limit is reached): 119.82 health/second.

Again, all numbers I presented are the absolute perfect situation where your target does absolutely nothing to try and prevent being hit. They also all turn off if you enter death shroud for any reason. It also does not take into account aftercast delays on anything but dagger auto, so actual numbers are lower.

It is also worth noting that this is a massive investment, requiring 10 trait points and 4 major traits to pull off. Also precludes most utility.

PRAISE BE TO DRARNOR! Showing once again, we are balanced around optimal conditions and scenarios that are about as likely to happen as you winning the lottery on another planet. Seriously…this stuff just makes me cry. V_V;

Thanks for the analysis. I do use some of the traits at times, so its useful to see how the math works out. I use them as much for the damage boost as for the healing, which is slightly higher than the figures you came up with.

Vampiric traits provide a decent passive damage/healing boost along the way when you’re picking up something more important anyways, but as your build shows its not worth building your entire character around them.

Awesome job, Drarnor! Thank you for the detailed analysis.

I also came to the conclusion that a simple regen off of MoB was better than trying to siphon but your numbers may one day spark a balance patch.

Great post. The only way to really fix this issue is to make life stealing traits trigger in a more uniform manner across all weapons/skills. Something like making them a single target proc with a 0.5 to 1 second ICD, but upping the damage by about 3-5 times as well.

The reason being that all traited life steal seem to be balanced around burst skills hitting multiple times a second, or Wells, Marks and other AoE skills consistently hitting 5 targets. When we’re not fighting 3+ targets as you show, then vampiric traits become seriously less effective and not worth the investment. Right now it’s better to invest in some LF gain/DS traits, which are better overall at increasing effective health instead of all out siphon.

Changing vampiric traits to single target proc with an ICD would also greatly improve the effectiveness of life steal DPS. Instead of dealing miniscule amounts of damage portioned over multiple enemies, we would instead have all our life steal damaging one enemy in a consistent and significant way (except for AoEs which would likely randomly hit people).

The only vampiric trait I would probably keep the same is Vampiric Master, since it works just as well against 1 enemy as it does 5. It could also be abused by just taking one minion like golem if it was single proc.

Just to throw in some numbers for Vampiric Master:
Heals for 63 per hit in the build he used, all utility minions average out at 1/1.5 attacks per second, flesh golem is 1/1.2, blood fiend is 1/3, so they give a total of 240 HP/s assuming ideal situations and bloodthirst.

Which is why Vampiric Master is arguably the only vampiric trait that actually works well, because it is inherently gated and so won’t have some weird extreme case, but also works relatively well even in sub-ideal cases because even sub-ideal is pretty close to ideal. Especially if they fixed AI it would be pretty good.

Which is why I feel all Vampiric traits need some kind of gating. Wells already have it for Vampiric Rituals, it is gated by duration/CD. But V/VP both need a 1s ICD, and have their values significantly increased.

+1

First of all I thank you for the work you put into this. You did a really nice job. You even used WvW itemization to achieve slightly higher healing power then comparable sPvP amulets (except Clerics) but used training golems later on.

(inb4 “But siphons in Clerics are OP”)

And I’m with Bhawb regarding his idea to gate siphons in some shape or form.
I was also thinking about if the devs should remove Bloodthirst in order to have as little deviation as possible. By removing as many outliers as possible it would give them the chance to find the sweet spot for siphons between utterly useless and OP as hell.
Maybe even with siphon healing through DS in mind.

edit: Just realized that ANet isn’t even coherent about their own decisions regarding siphons, as Signet of Vampirism has a 1 second ICD per attacker.

Nice math Drarnor.
I honestly wouldn’t have guessed that even under optimal conditions a 6 point investment in Blood Magic would net less than regeneration.
In a real fight you probably wouldn’t come close to that even if you could siphon on 5 targets. Still think vamp traits should be the only source of healing allowed through DS?

flow.6043:

Still think vamp traits should be the only source of healing allowed through DS?

Never did. Always argued for all self-healing traits (vamp traits, parasitic bond, parasitic contagion) and the Regeneration boon as a start.

I still disagree with needing an ICD to properly balance siphon traits. The gating is already inherent by cast times and, with the numbers I mentioned, average hits/second when trying to maximize procs is 1.7 hits/second. A nice number to balance them around: figure that Vampiric procs 1.7 times/second in an ideal situation. In real combat, that average probably drops to 1/second for a focused build. Balance around that.

Thanks for the analysis. I do use some of the traits at times, so its useful to see how the math works out. I use them as much for the damage boost as for the healing, which is slightly higher than the figures you came up with.

Actually, damage numbers are identical to the healing values in my calculations.

I’m hopping it will never be gated. I like life syphon the way it is. I know its sad but it is one of the main reasons I play the necro. I personally have 2 necros that are centred around using life syphoning. Granted one uses an environmental weapon (flamers) and it’s in general used for farming or dealing larger amounts of damage in the silver wastes (life syphon/stealing ignores armor/tough bark) but I enjoy it a lot. I will lose a lot if its changed to have a ICD.

It doesn’t need an ICD , it should work in DS first then the scaling should be improved just like personal regen, they need to reduce DS pool or it will not happen.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

flow.6043:

Still think vamp traits should be the only source of healing allowed through DS?

Never did. Always argued for all self-healing traits (vamp traits, parasitic bond, parasitic contagion) and the Regeneration boon as a start.

Even if you have all that combined (which wouldn’t be a viable build anyway) it’d be far from enough to sustain yourself in a meaningful way.

flow.6043:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

flow.6043:

Still think vamp traits should be the only source of healing allowed through DS?

Never did. Always argued for all self-healing traits (vamp traits, parasitic bond, parasitic contagion) and the Regeneration boon as a start.

Even if you have all that combined (which wouldn’t be a viable build anyway) it’d be far from enough to sustain yourself in a meaningful way.

Hence “as a start.” Honestly, Necro sustain issues will never be totally solved as long as health is the only defense we have.

If that’s really what you believe than I honestly don’t understand why you are so much against ally healing through DS.
And I don’t understand why you would allow regen applied by allies, but no other healing skills.

flow.6043:

If that’s really what you believe than I honestly don’t understand why you are so much against ally healing through DS.
And I don’t understand why you would allow regen applied by allies, but no other healing skills.

Unrestricted healing combined with death shroud’s uptime is far too likely to be overwhelming. That’s the problem with health being the sole defense of the profession: it’s too little or too much, with a very, very thin line between.

Full healing in death shroud is a good end goal, but if the balance line gets crossed before we reach it, then we should stop there.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Full healing in death shroud is a good end goal

Yes.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Unrestricted healing combined with death shroud’s uptime is far too likely to be overwhelming.

No.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

flow.6043:

If that’s really what you believe than I honestly don’t understand why you are so much against ally healing through DS.
And I don’t understand why you would allow regen applied by allies, but no other healing skills.

Unrestricted healing combined with death shroud’s uptime is far too likely to be overwhelming. That’s the problem with health being the sole defense of the profession: it’s too little or too much, with a very, very thin line between.

Full healing in death shroud is a good end goal, but if the balance line gets crossed before we reach it, then we should stop there.

This. For example, combining Unholy Sanctuary, good healing power, armor class and quick LF gain already can be overwhelming effective health. With my own sustain builds it can become an unending game of wackamole, if enemies don’t have enough pressure and spike damage to get through SoV+Regeneration+Unholy Sactuary+Soul Marks+Mitigation revolving door.

People forget that while in DS, health bar healing is way more effective than normal healing outside of DS. You’re getting 100% of the net benefit of the healing, while taking damage to an easily replenished secondary healthbar (life force) with benefits of its own. Nothing like hanging out in DS for a couple seconds and letting a group of enemies expend their spike on it, healing all your health in the process and exiting DS only to use something like soul marks to get 100% LF back then repeat.

Edit: On the gating issue. If life steal is not gated and normalized, then builds that abuse constant area hits and sustain may become too too powerful in their regen and with very little vampiric trait investment (essentially just vampiric).

Balekai.6083:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

flow.6043:

If that’s really what you believe than I honestly don’t understand why you are so much against ally healing through DS.
And I don’t understand why you would allow regen applied by allies, but no other healing skills.

Unrestricted healing combined with death shroud’s uptime is far too likely to be overwhelming. That’s the problem with health being the sole defense of the profession: it’s too little or too much, with a very, very thin line between.

Full healing in death shroud is a good end goal, but if the balance line gets crossed before we reach it, then we should stop there.

This. For example, combining Unholy Sanctuary, good healing power, armor class and quick LF gain already can be overwhelming effective health. With my own sustain builds it can become an unending game of wackamole, if enemies don’t have enough pressure and spike damage to get through SoV+Regeneration+Unholy Sactuary+Soul Marks+Mitigation revolving door.

People forget that while in DS, health bar healing is way more effective than normal healing outside of DS. You’re getting 100% of the net benefit of the healing, while taking damage to an easily replenished secondary healthbar (life force) with benefits of its own. Nothing like hanging out in DS for a couple seconds and letting a group of enemies expend their spike on it, healing all your health in the process and exiting DS only to use something like soul marks to get 100% LF back then repeat.

Edit: On the gating issue. If life steal is not gated and normalized, then builds that abuse constant area hits and sustain may become too too powerful in their regen and with very little vampiric trait investment (essentially just vampiric).

So full of absolute dookie. I’ll burst right through that on any class.

Balekai.6083:

Edit: On the gating issue. If life steal is not gated and normalized, then builds that abuse constant area hits and sustain may become too too powerful in their regen and with very little vampiric trait investment (essentially just vampiric).

When going for max procs, you get 1.7 procs/second against a single target. Area hits mean more enemies, meaning more incoming damage to counteract any healing. Also, this sustain has much more counterplay. Poison works just as well as on the rest of the regen builds in the game, but so do blinds, blocks, dodges, invulnerabilities, and simply kiting or hard CC.

When you get into an actual combat situation, the average drops to ~1-1.2 prcos/second for Vampiric. That’s a very easy number to balance around.

NeXeD.3042:

Balekai.6083:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

flow.6043:

If that’s really what you believe than I honestly don’t understand why you are so much against ally healing through DS.
And I don’t understand why you would allow regen applied by allies, but no other healing skills.

Unrestricted healing combined with death shroud’s uptime is far too likely to be overwhelming. That’s the problem with health being the sole defense of the profession: it’s too little or too much, with a very, very thin line between.

Full healing in death shroud is a good end goal, but if the balance line gets crossed before we reach it, then we should stop there.

This. For example, combining Unholy Sanctuary, good healing power, armor class and quick LF gain already can be overwhelming effective health. With my own sustain builds it can become an unending game of wackamole, if enemies don’t have enough pressure and spike damage to get through SoV+Regeneration+Unholy Sactuary+Soul Marks+Mitigation revolving door.

People forget that while in DS, health bar healing is way more effective than normal healing outside of DS. You’re getting 100% of the net benefit of the healing, while taking damage to an easily replenished secondary healthbar (life force) with benefits of its own. Nothing like hanging out in DS for a couple seconds and letting a group of enemies expend their spike on it, healing all your health in the process and exiting DS only to use something like soul marks to get 100% LF back then repeat.

Edit: On the gating issue. If life steal is not gated and normalized, then builds that abuse constant area hits and sustain may become too too powerful in their regen and with very little vampiric trait investment (essentially just vampiric).

So full of absolute dookie. I’ll burst right through that on any class.

Oh it can definitely bursted through by skilled/smart players, but there are many cases where you can multiple people that just can’t kill you if they don’t know what they’re doing, don’t coordinate or their builds just don’t have the spike. To the point where people are left wondering what’s going on taking so long to kill a necro. :p

Let me put it this way:

I have a weird Well/Unholy Sanc/Condi sustain build I play around with spvp. Firstly it combines SoV passive (410) and constant Regeneration from MoB+MoE (236) for 646 health per second in most cases. 20K health, 3000 armor, 14K LF.

Then you have Marks, Grasping Dead, and if they’re hitting five targets, are healing 215 per cast. The Marks are also giving me 3% LF buffed by Soul Comprehension, giving me 575 LF each time I hit something with them. So each cast is essentially giving me 890 effective health on up to 4-5 marks at a time if I make it into DS of course.

Then since i’m using a condi spec, I have plenty of area weakness for 50% fumble, which is essentially 25% less damage over time.

It also runs Wells specced for Ritual Mastery and Ritual of Protection. So when someone tries to spike me outside of DS, I just throw down WoC to corrupt them and/or WoD to completely counter their burst. They usually by this point have more Weakness if I WoCed them, and I have also gained 4-8 seconds of protection (-33 damage).

By this point the enemy or enemies are ready for their second burst. They’re weakened, I have protection up, I usually have a full 14K lifeforce bar, healing what little damage I took to health I didn’t mitigate at 236 net health per second. Vital Persistence allows me to stay in DS for quite a long time, but usually 5-10 seconds does it (and is preferred). By this point I usually have full endurance as well. Exit DS, throw down more marks etc. use dodges to evade 4-5 second of damage, re-enter DS, exit and by this point more Marks/Wells should be up to mitigate another large burst by the time I run out of LF.

What I’m trying to say is that Necro sustain can already be achieved through mix and match of high healing power, armor, little to some vampiric traits, DS traits and good use of mitigation. If the effectiveness of vampiric traits were greatly increased and/or allowed in DS with no ICD, these builds which have recently become almost viable, could become very powerful if not OP.

Balekai.6083:

NeXeD.3042:

Balekai.6083:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

flow.6043:

If that’s really what you believe than I honestly don’t understand why you are so much against ally healing through DS.
And I don’t understand why you would allow regen applied by allies, but no other healing skills.

Unrestricted healing combined with death shroud’s uptime is far too likely to be overwhelming. That’s the problem with health being the sole defense of the profession: it’s too little or too much, with a very, very thin line between.

Full healing in death shroud is a good end goal, but if the balance line gets crossed before we reach it, then we should stop there.

This. For example, combining Unholy Sanctuary, good healing power, armor class and quick LF gain already can be overwhelming effective health. With my own sustain builds it can become an unending game of wackamole, if enemies don’t have enough pressure and spike damage to get through SoV+Regeneration+Unholy Sactuary+Soul Marks+Mitigation revolving door.

People forget that while in DS, health bar healing is way more effective than normal healing outside of DS. You’re getting 100% of the net benefit of the healing, while taking damage to an easily replenished secondary healthbar (life force) with benefits of its own. Nothing like hanging out in DS for a couple seconds and letting a group of enemies expend their spike on it, healing all your health in the process and exiting DS only to use something like soul marks to get 100% LF back then repeat.

Edit: On the gating issue. If life steal is not gated and normalized, then builds that abuse constant area hits and sustain may become too too powerful in their regen and with very little vampiric trait investment (essentially just vampiric).

So full of absolute dookie. I’ll burst right through that on any class.

Oh it can definitely bursted through by skilled/smart players, but there are many cases where you can multiple people that just can’t kill you if they don’t know what they’re doing, don’t coordinate or their builds just don’t have the spike. To the point where people are left wondering what’s going on taking so long to kill a necro. :p

Let me put it this way:

I have a weird Well/Unholy Sanc/Condi sustain build I play around with spvp. Firstly it combines SoV passive (410) and constant Regeneration from MoB+MoE (236) for 646 health per second in most cases. 20K health, 3000 armor, 14K LF.

Then you have Marks, Grasping Dead, and if they’re hitting five targets, are healing 215 per cast. The Marks are also giving me 3% LF buffed by Soul Comprehension, giving me 575 LF each time I hit something with them. So each cast is essentially giving me 890 effective health on up to 4-5 marks at a time if I make it into DS of course.

Then since i’m using a condi spec, I have plenty of area weakness for 50% fumble, which is essentially 25% less damage over time.

It also runs Wells specced for Ritual Mastery and Ritual of Protection. So when someone tries to spike me outside of DS, I just throw down WoC to corrupt them and/or WoD to completely counter their burst. They usually by this point have more Weakness if I WoCed them, and I have also gained 4-8 seconds of protection (-33 damage).

By this point the enemy or enemies are ready for their second burst. They’re weakened, I have protection up, I usually have a full 14K lifeforce bar, healing what little damage I took to health I didn’t mitigate at 236 net health per second. Vital Persistence allows me to stay in DS for quite a long time, but usually 5-10 seconds does it (and is preferred). By this point I usually have full endurance as well. Exit DS, throw down more marks etc. use dodges to evade 4-5 second of damage, re-enter DS, exit and by this point more Marks/Wells should be up to mitigate another large burst by the time I run out of LF.

What I’m trying to say is that Necro sustain can already be achieved through mix and match of high healing power, armor, little to some vampiric traits, DS traits and good use of mitigation. If the effectiveness of vampiric traits were greatly increased and/or allowed in DS with no ICD, these builds which have recently become almost viable, could become very powerful if not OP.

I’ve tried every combination of every kittening trait of every kittening amulet every kittening sigil everything. The best option for sustain is a spectral build but it’s still sub par to just killing your opponent.

I don’t need anyone to explain well your not counting on my weakness uptime and my traiting for protection on wells and my sustain blah blah blahh. Your numbers may look ok in THEORY. In practice I promise you against any decent player you won’t do any damage and they will kill you.

NeXeD.3042:

Balekai.6083:

NeXeD.3042:

Balekai.6083:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

flow.6043:

If that’s really what you believe than I honestly don’t understand why you are so much against ally healing through DS.
And I don’t understand why you would allow regen applied by allies, but no other healing skills.

Unrestricted healing combined with death shroud’s uptime is far too likely to be overwhelming. That’s the problem with health being the sole defense of the profession: it’s too little or too much, with a very, very thin line between.

Full healing in death shroud is a good end goal, but if the balance line gets crossed before we reach it, then we should stop there.

This. For example, combining Unholy Sanctuary, good healing power, armor class and quick LF gain already can be overwhelming effective health. With my own sustain builds it can become an unending game of wackamole, if enemies don’t have enough pressure and spike damage to get through SoV+Regeneration+Unholy Sactuary+Soul Marks+Mitigation revolving door.

People forget that while in DS, health bar healing is way more effective than normal healing outside of DS. You’re getting 100% of the net benefit of the healing, while taking damage to an easily replenished secondary healthbar (life force) with benefits of its own. Nothing like hanging out in DS for a couple seconds and letting a group of enemies expend their spike on it, healing all your health in the process and exiting DS only to use something like soul marks to get 100% LF back then repeat.

Edit: On the gating issue. If life steal is not gated and normalized, then builds that abuse constant area hits and sustain may become too too powerful in their regen and with very little vampiric trait investment (essentially just vampiric).

So full of absolute dookie. I’ll burst right through that on any class.

Oh it can definitely bursted through by skilled/smart players, but there are many cases where you can multiple people that just can’t kill you if they don’t know what they’re doing, don’t coordinate or their builds just don’t have the spike. To the point where people are left wondering what’s going on taking so long to kill a necro. :p

Let me put it this way:

I have a weird Well/Unholy Sanc/Condi sustain build I play around with spvp. Firstly it combines SoV passive (410) and constant Regeneration from MoB+MoE (236) for 646 health per second in most cases. 20K health, 3000 armor, 14K LF.

Then you have Marks, Grasping Dead, and if they’re hitting five targets, are healing 215 per cast. The Marks are also giving me 3% LF buffed by Soul Comprehension, giving me 575 LF each time I hit something with them. So each cast is essentially giving me 890 effective health on up to 4-5 marks at a time if I make it into DS of course.

Then since i’m using a condi spec, I have plenty of area weakness for 50% fumble, which is essentially 25% less damage over time.

It also runs Wells specced for Ritual Mastery and Ritual of Protection. So when someone tries to spike me outside of DS, I just throw down WoC to corrupt them and/or WoD to completely counter their burst. They usually by this point have more Weakness if I WoCed them, and I have also gained 4-8 seconds of protection (-33 damage).

By this point the enemy or enemies are ready for their second burst. They’re weakened, I have protection up, I usually have a full 14K lifeforce bar, healing what little damage I took to health I didn’t mitigate at 236 net health per second. Vital Persistence allows me to stay in DS for quite a long time, but usually 5-10 seconds does it (and is preferred). By this point I usually have full endurance as well. Exit DS, throw down more marks etc. use dodges to evade 4-5 second of damage, re-enter DS, exit and by this point more Marks/Wells should be up to mitigate another large burst by the time I run out of LF.

What I’m trying to say is that Necro sustain can already be achieved through mix and match of high healing power, armor, little to some vampiric traits, DS traits and good use of mitigation. If the effectiveness of vampiric traits were greatly increased and/or allowed in DS with no ICD, these builds which have recently become almost viable, could become very powerful if not OP.

I’ve tried every combination of every kittening trait of every kittening amulet every kittening sigil everything. The best option for sustain is a spectral build but it’s still sub par to just killing your opponent.

I don’t need anyone to explain well your not counting on my weakness uptime and my traiting for protection on wells and my sustain blah blah blahh. Your numbers may look ok in THEORY. In practice I promise you against any decent player you won’t do any damage and they will kill you.

They work in practice.

Balekai.6083:

NeXeD.3042:

So full of absolute dookie. I’ll burst right through that on any class.

Oh it can definitely bursted through by skilled/smart players, but there are many cases where you can multiple people that just can’t kill you if they don’t know what they’re doing, don’t coordinate or their builds just don’t have the spike. To the point where people are left wondering what’s going on taking so long to kill a necro. :p

So Death Shroud shouldn’t be improved because bad players who don’t know what they’re doing can’t kill you. kay.

flow.6043:

Balekai.6083:

NeXeD.3042:

So full of absolute dookie. I’ll burst right through that on any class.

Oh it can definitely bursted through by skilled/smart players, but there are many cases where you can multiple people that just can’t kill you if they don’t know what they’re doing, don’t coordinate or their builds just don’t have the spike. To the point where people are left wondering what’s going on taking so long to kill a necro. :p

So Death Shroud shouldn’t be improved because bad players who don’t know what they’re doing can’t kill you. kay.

No what I’m saying is that in practice sustain can be achieved against good and bad players, but can be countered with good play and counter play. I’m concerned that certain buffs to Necro life stealing or regen (such as allowing all healing in DS or greatly increasing life steal amounts) would have unintended consequences many in the community don’t think about.

There’s plenty of things that can be improved, but they have to be in a manner that takes into consideration all of our abilities, not just the necro meta of today.

ANet will never allow siphons to work for any variety of builds as long as they can be “abused” by a specific build type. Wells have the chance to proc too many instances of siphoning for them to ever be strong enough to work on builds that don’t use wells.

Question where do people expect to get most of their healing from the blood magic trait line Vampiric Or the Grandmaster trait
I think vampiric maybe can use a small buff

What need to be changed is the grandmaster
if you look at the number drarnor posted
locust swarm easily steal enough life to equal two wells
vampiric is doing far more healing than our grandmaster
i suggest a change to vampiric rituals

also keep in mind that most people in actual combat move out of wells
when you use locust swarm you can follow some1 and get every hit with locust swarm

Vampiric Rituals is probably fine as it is design wise, but needs to be buffed numbers wise. It is inherently gated, just like Vampiric Master, so no point holding it back. Vampiric/Precision though need ICDs to open them up to non-well builds, and also to remove the “ideal case” that they get from wells, which is 100% holding them back from being decent right now. The very fact that sigils and foods, which have ICDs, are so much better than our traits is proof of this.

I don’t need anyone to explain well your not counting on my weakness uptime and my traiting for protection on wells and my sustain blah blah blahh. Your numbers may look ok in THEORY. In practice I promise you against any decent player you won’t do any damage and they will kill you.[/quote]

They work in practice.
[/quote]

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNArYGn0ISRNWTD83YinhS6JIAa2JDhUgyfYHA-TZQbAAQZAA

Here’s your build minus sigils and runes And a 3rd utility slot which either uses a stunbreak Or the build is even worse than I originally thought. So you’ve got a condi build rocking toughness and healing power with no condi duration nice anyone with hoelbrek pretty much is immune to your build so you are useless against engineers and elementalists. You don’t have enough conditions or duration to do anything against a Shoutbow or guardian. Ever class even traited as bunker is going to out dps you.

Youve basically created a walking nerf ball.

No it doesn’t work in practice, the other team can literally just ignore you and kill your teammates while you flail around hitting people with 2 seconds bleeds.

Just because you ran around for 10 minutes in hotjoins slapping people with a piece of spaghetti does not make your build decent, viable, etc.

NeXeD.3042:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNArYGn0ISRNWTD83YinhS6JIAa2JDhUgyfYHA-TZQbAAQZAA

Here’s your build minus sigils and runes And a 3rd utility slot which either uses a stunbreak Or the build is even worse than I originally thought. So you’ve got a condi build rocking toughness and healing power with no condi duration nice anyone with hoelbrek pretty much is immune to your build so you are useless against engineers and elementalists. You don’t have enough conditions or duration to do anything against a Shoutbow or guardian. Ever class even traited as bunker is going to out dps you.

Youve basically created a walking nerf ball.

No it doesn’t work in practice, the other team can literally just ignore you and kill your teammates while you flail around hitting people with 2 seconds bleeds.

Just because you ran around for 10 minutes in hotjoins slapping people with a piece of spaghetti does not make your build decent, viable, etc.

You’re very close. Geomancy/Renewal or Leech sigils, Undead or other condi runes of course. Basically this:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNArYWn0ISRNWTD+0A7Nm4ZokeCCgmdyQIFo8H2BA-TJhHABPVGw2zAwL7PAwjAAA

As for the condi duration. That is the weak point of the build(s) and trust me its really hard to keep DPS up when solo. You have to cycle through every skill you have to keep pressure up (fortunately that’s natural to condi builds). However, it’s highly unlikely that skilled players allow conditions to run more than 10-15 seconds at a time without condi clearing. The trick is to keep applying them so it doesn’t matter until they run out of condi clear. Necro bleeds in of themselves are fairly long durations around 7-10 seconds. 20%-35% reduction in condi duration puts them to 5-7 seconds. Not a huge difference.

The reality is that in most cases, you’re doing about 500-1K damage in bleeds, 250ish in poison, and the usual torment, bad normal damage etc. You get to transfer all the extra burning, bleeds and poison they apply to you back easily with Putrid Mark/Deathly Swarm. You get extra condis from WoC as well. Testing similar power based builds, it’s feels better to have that area conditional damage like the above than just doing 1K damage to one or two targets with 2-3K bursts here and there. There’s just not enough pressure there on the power side to keep enemy players at bay or kill them, unlike condis.

Allied players still benefit from your area regeneration, renewal swaps, area protection, area weakness, area poison, your area blind spam, area boon corrupt and area condi convert. You are also fairly good at ressing people through heavy pressure and the use of doom while in DS. It’s not all that easy to just ignore, especially if on a point your trying to contest.

This isn’t my point though. That somhow there’s a super awsome viable Necro attrition build that surpasses everyone elses and is most optimal that everyone missed.

Far from it.

What I’m was saying is that there are mechanics already in place that makes these builds workable if not viable, compared to impossible 1-2 years ago. Having tested and played around with the mechanics you begin to see the potential or the risks for future abuse of Necro attrition depending on how it’s buffed.

For example. If the fix to necro healing was just allowing self heals in DS, how would that affect the above build? Well for starters in addition to Unholy Sanctuary (236 healing per sec), I would be benefiting from SoV and Regeneration (646 per second) for 882 net health regen, while using a completely different healthbar. 10 seconds of DS would essentially be pausing the fight for 10 seconds and healing 8820 base health without using a heal skill, without mitigation or real counter play. Just popping DS and laughing at people. That would seriously swing fights and burst. If you made life steals work in DS as they are now, then Life Transfer alone would net heal me 1935 health over 3 seconds hitting 5 targets (which it can do easily), while also restoring a lot of my life force. Increasing vampiric traits too much without ICDs would just allow the build a lot more regen in addition to all the damage mitigation, making it a lot easier to pull off not being wackamoled.

All those combined would be somewhat ridiculous.

Which is why there needs to be more thought when reworking things like DS mechanics and life steals, to keep barely viable builds from becoming crazy OP due to oversights. To balance one end of life steals (normal single target hits), you sort of have to nerf the other (area/channel hits) and bring them closer together. That’s done through a much bigger life steal with an ICD. The downside is that one big life steal per second adds counter play issues. To enemy players, life steals may feel like an un-removable burning effect (“cough” Dhuumfire on steroids).

Balekai.6083:

Which is why there needs to be more thought when reworking things like DS mechanics and life steals, to keep barely viable builds from becoming crazy OP due to oversights. To balance one end of life steals (normal single target hits), you sort of have to nerf the other (area/channel hits) and bring them closer together. That’s done through a much bigger life steal with an ICD. The downside is that one big life steal per second adds counter play issues. To enemy players, life steals may feel like an un-removable burning effect (“cough” Dhuumfire on steroids).

Why? Why should area lifesteal be brought in line with single target and have very little, if any variation? Area lifesteal requires multiple foes, and multiple foes means more incoming damage. No ICD is a self-built scaling mechanic, which Necro sorely needs.

Please explain this to me.

Also, I realized I goofed a bit with my OP in the thread. Will be editing it. Analysis is still accurate, so no worries there. However, for single target, highest proc amounts actually come from axe, not dagger. I’ll work out a new analysis for axe siphoning and post it here.

Also, average procs/second from max investment (with dagger mainhand) is 3.06. Not sure how I calculated 1.7 before. In typical combat, expect that to drop to 2-2.kittens/second. Still a value that can be balanced around and currently isn’t.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Why? Why should area lifesteal be brought in line with single target and have very little, if any variation? Area lifesteal requires multiple foes, and multiple foes means more incoming damage. No ICD is a self-built scaling mechanic, which Necro sorely needs.

Please explain this to me.

Well of Suffering against 5 enemies will pulse 7 times, allowing it to proc each siphon 35 times against 5 targets, and it can proc 3 siphons. Meaning each cast of WoS can proc 105 siphons, 70 instances of V/VP. As long as that is true, no other build will ever be able to access life steal, because it will always be balanced around the builds that can theoretically proc hundreds of life steals per skill use. So sure, we can buff siphoning until it is good enough for D/WH 4 wells build, but it will never be good on any other build because for it to be strong for them it would be OP on D/WH 4 wells.

Vampiric Rituals doesn’t need it and it can scale with enemies sure. But allowing Necro to potentially proc V/VP dozens of times per seconds in spikes means it will never be balanced for any build that can’t match those proc times. Having an ICD allows for even a staff build to benefit equally from V/VP.

Bhawb.7408:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Why? Why should area lifesteal be brought in line with single target and have very little, if any variation? Area lifesteal requires multiple foes, and multiple foes means more incoming damage. No ICD is a self-built scaling mechanic, which Necro sorely needs.

Please explain this to me.

Well of Suffering against 5 enemies will pulse 7 times, allowing it to proc each siphon 35 times against 5 targets, and it can proc 3 siphons. Meaning each cast of WoS can proc 105 siphons, 70 instances of V/VP. As long as that is true, no other build will ever be able to access life steal, because it will always be balanced around the builds that can theoretically proc hundreds of life steals per skill use. So sure, we can buff siphoning until it is good enough for D/WH 4 wells build, but it will never be good on any other build because for it to be strong for them it would be OP on D/WH 4 wells.

Vampiric Rituals doesn’t need it and it can scale with enemies sure. But allowing Necro to potentially proc V/VP dozens of times per seconds in spikes means it will never be balanced for any build that can’t match those proc times. Having an ICD allows for even a staff build to benefit equally from V/VP.

And to do so requires:
6 trait points spent for the effect
All Major traits in that line
Very high investment in Precision (or at least crit chance, and it can’t be in death shroud).
5 enemies in the area who are throwing damage right back

Since the Well hits 6 times (not 7), it can only proc 90 times absolute maximum. With all 6 pulses critting, it’s only 18 procs on a single target. You can get “burst” siphons this way, but the average is still not that high and is no different than things like Selfless Daring providing small bursts of healing.

Again, why should AoE siphon ability be limited? Seems like those potentials (if made stronger) are very much in line power-wise given the investment it takes.

Necros lack scaling defense, so scaling sustain needs to substitute. ICD’s kill that entirely.

EDIT: Also edited the OP to reflect Well of Suffering hitting 6 times instead of the 5 every other well does.

@balekai

You don’t actually pvp do you…..

There is so much wrong with what you said…. please try pvping outside of hotjoins before saying a build like this works in practice. Maybe bring it to the AG tourney on monday, or just do some ranked games. people aren’t the same as golems, they move they dodge they CC the living kitten out of you and they focus fire you.

Oddly enough I’m actually in agreement that full healing in ds could be horribly OVERPOWERED. But that’s mostly due to my experience that I don’t even have to trait for sustain to survive if I’m good enough.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Balekai.6083:

Which is why there needs to be more thought when reworking things like DS mechanics and life steals, to keep barely viable builds from becoming crazy OP due to oversights. To balance one end of life steals (normal single target hits), you sort of have to nerf the other (area/channel hits) and bring them closer together. That’s done through a much bigger life steal with an ICD. The downside is that one big life steal per second adds counter play issues. To enemy players, life steals may feel like an un-removable burning effect (“cough” Dhuumfire on steroids).

Why? Why should area lifesteal be brought in line with single target and have very little, if any variation? Area lifesteal requires multiple foes, and multiple foes means more incoming damage. No ICD is a self-built scaling mechanic, which Necro sorely needs.

Please explain this to me.

Also, I realized I goofed a bit with my OP in the thread. Will be editing it. Analysis is still accurate, so no worries there. However, for single target, highest proc amounts actually come from axe, not dagger. I’ll work out a new analysis for axe siphoning and post it here.

Also, average procs/second from max investment (with dagger mainhand) is 3.06. Not sure how I calculated 1.7 before. In typical combat, expect that to drop to 2-2.kittens/second. Still a value that can be balanced around and currently isn’t.

I’m actually suggesting the opposite. Bringing single target life steal in line with AoE/Channel, which life steal is currently balanced around. So that all attacks no matter the skill or weapon, are hitting/healing at what life steal traits are currently balanced for at optimal procing.

Unfortunately an ICD would nerf burst life stealing, so I’m not sure how that could be taken into account while balancing, since making ICD life steal too powerful may turn it into a dhuumfire-like effect.

But my issue is that by greatly buffing life steal traits in order to make single target siphoning more viable, it will push area/channel procs to become too powerful after 3-5 enemies when you combine it with other mitigation and regen. There may be a sweet spot or enemies may still be able to counter with enough CC, but going overboard may just lead to builds that may abuse damage reduction amounts, regening and essentially never die as long as they keep plopping down Marks, AoE, Wells, channel skills etc.

Again, by making it ICD with a much higher life steal, you’re normalizing life steal by making single target vampiric application just as useful as area/channel application. It doesn’t matter if it’s 1 enemy or 5 enemies. Take Vampiric Master, which is the only life steal trait that truly works as intended, because minion attacks are plentiful enough to make the healing/damage potent and the number of foes doesn’t change its effectiveness. Just as long as your minions are attacking something and aren’t dead. :p

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Balekai.6083:

Which is why there needs to be more thought when reworking things like DS mechanics and life steals, to keep barely viable builds from becoming crazy OP due to oversights. To balance one end of life steals (normal single target hits), you sort of have to nerf the other (area/channel hits) and bring them closer together. That’s done through a much bigger life steal with an ICD. The downside is that one big life steal per second adds counter play issues. To enemy players, life steals may feel like an un-removable burning effect (“cough” Dhuumfire on steroids).

Why? Why should area lifesteal be brought in line with single target and have very little, if any variation? Area lifesteal requires multiple foes, and multiple foes means more incoming damage. No ICD is a self-built scaling mechanic, which Necro sorely needs.

I agree. Aoe scaling of healing and lf regen is the only thing we can hope for with nothing but health as a damage buffer. Introducing an ICD (like the one on Vamp Signet) would be the worst they could do.

Balekai.6083:

Life Transfer alone would net heal me 1935 health over 3 seconds hitting 5 targets

Seriously, 2k healing from a 40 sec cd skill that is more likely to be interrupted than Consume Conditions while facing 5 opponents…. that is NOTHING.
Same goes for the rest of your numbers, they simply won’t work that way in actual fights.

Balekai.6083:

What I’m was saying is that there are mechanics already in place that makes these builds workable if not viable

Sorry, I don’t buy it, I’m 100% with NeXeD here. Your build doesn’t do any damage at the cost of having slightly better sustain than the meta. Yes, just slightly, you are still suffering from all the same sustain issues as every other necro build without being able to dish out any counter pressure.
And why on earth would you take a healing skill that doesn’t even work in DS when the build is supposedly all about tanking in DS with Unholy Sanctuary?

NeXeD.3042:

Oddly enough I’m actually in agreement that full healing in ds could be horribly OVERPOWERED.

Nooo NeXeD, my only ally xD

I will never be convinced that full healing could be even remotely op.
Every argument I’ve ever heard was something along the lines of:
“In this totally not viable build that will suck just a little bit less if vamp traits worked all the time, there could be a very specific outlier scenario where a necro is getting a million hp per second! But it’s actually just a fraction of healing that all other classes get all the time while they are blocking/invulnerable/evading/escaping… but on necros it would be mega op because second health bar!”

NeXeD.3042:

@balekai

You don’t actually pvp do you…..

There is so much wrong with what you said…. please try pvping outside of hotjoins before saying a build like this works in practice. Maybe bring it to the AG tourney on monday, or just do some ranked games. people aren’t the same as golems, they move they dodge they CC the living kitten out of you and they focus fire you.

Oddly enough I’m actually in agreement that full healing in ds could be horribly OVERPOWERED. But that’s mostly due to my experience that I don’t even have to trait for sustain to survive if I’m good enough.

You seem to be under the misimpression that I actually believe its somehow optimal and super competitive. I experiment with it in soloq and hotjoin.

The point was that even as things are now, you can see where necro mechanics could be better with good changes or outright abused with too good of changes. In some circumstances, Necro attrition already works and based off that, we can see where it needs to go from what it is now.

Even though I used it as an example, I don’t think we will ever get full healing of course. It was just an extreme to show what such a basic change would do to certain builds, if not all builds because of DS mechanics.

As for playstyle, I agree Necro right now can sustain through proper kiting and smart use of skills, DS and positioning. I’m more concerns with a few changes to DS to make it more useful in spike situations on par with evades, dodges and the like. But if full siphoning is ever to become a “thing,” it has to be buffed compared to what it is now, since going that route always feels inferior to similar non-siphon builds.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

And to do so requires:
6 trait points spent for the effect
All Major traits in that line
Very high investment in Precision (or at least crit chance, and it can’t be in death shroud).
5 enemies in the area who are throwing damage right back

Since the Well hits 6 times (not 7), it can only proc 90 times absolute maximum. With all 6 pulses critting, it’s only 18 procs on a single target. You can get “burst” siphons this way, but the average is still not that high and is no different than things like Selfless Daring providing small bursts of healing.

Again, why should AoE siphon ability be limited? Seems like those potentials (if made stronger) are very much in line power-wise given the investment it takes.

Necros lack scaling defense, so scaling sustain needs to substitute. ICD’s kill that entirely.

EDIT: Also edited the OP to reflect Well of Suffering hitting 6 times instead of the 5 every other well does.

My bad, I forgot WoS was changed. All wells besides WoS apply their effects on activation and once per second after that, so 5s well has 6 pulses.

The point of ICDs isn’t to deal with scaling defense, it is the fact that nothing will ever be able to use siphoning if they are balanced towards an unreachable high-point. Sure wells can be balanced so that they have a strong effect, that is fine and that isn’t what I’m talking about. But what about Condi necro, which doesn’t have ways to proc V/VP hundreds of times? It will never find use for Blood Magic. What about a non-wells support build that wants Blood Magic for support? It is forced to pick up Vampiric which it will get no meaningful use out of because Vampiric will be balanced only for a build that is using D/WH+4 wells. That is the point, by balancing these traits towards wells we are doing the exact same thing ANet does when they balance on-entry traits to them being used every 7s on CD.

Without an ICD Vampiric will never, ever be useful to a non-wells build, and that is absurd to bar a major function of a tree to any build that isn’t wells.

flow.6043:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Balekai.6083:

Which is why there needs to be more thought when reworking things like DS mechanics and life steals, to keep barely viable builds from becoming crazy OP due to oversights. To balance one end of life steals (normal single target hits), you sort of have to nerf the other (area/channel hits) and bring them closer together. That’s done through a much bigger life steal with an ICD. The downside is that one big life steal per second adds counter play issues. To enemy players, life steals may feel like an un-removable burning effect (“cough” Dhuumfire on steroids).

Why? Why should area lifesteal be brought in line with single target and have very little, if any variation? Area lifesteal requires multiple foes, and multiple foes means more incoming damage. No ICD is a self-built scaling mechanic, which Necro sorely needs.

I agree. Aoe scaling of healing and lf regen is the only thing we can hope for with nothing but health as a damage buffer. Introducing an ICD (like the one on Vamp Signet) would be the worst they could do.

Balekai.6083:

Life Transfer alone would net heal me 1935 health over 3 seconds hitting 5 targets

Seriously, 2k healing from a 40 sec cd skill that is more likely to be interrupted than Consume Conditions while facing 5 opponents…. that is NOTHING.
Same goes for the rest of your numbers, they simply won’t work that way in actual fights.

Balekai.6083:

What I’m was saying is that there are mechanics already in place that makes these builds workable if not viable

Sorry, I don’t buy it, I’m 100% with NeXeD here. Your build doesn’t do any damage at the cost of having slightly better sustain than the meta. Yes, just slightly, you are still suffering from all the same sustain issues as every other necro build without being able to dish out any counter pressure.
And why on earth would you take a healing skill that doesn’t even work in DS when the build is supposedly all about tanking in DS with Unholy Sanctuary?

You’re missing the point on the life transfer. Yes 2K heal is peanuts when you have a normal health bar. However, when you’re in another health bar that you can almost instantly refill and you’re taking lots of damage, a net 2K heal is more like a 6K heal in effectiveness outside of DS, when looking at it from an effective health perspective.

How do the numbers not work that way in fights? Would not Unholy Sanctuary+SoV+Regeneration from the stats pulled from in-game, not heal me 882 base health per second while in DS if all healing was allowed in DS? It’s not hard to see how this could become overpowered.

Edit:

SoV is an experiment in healing while locked down. You use the passive as much as possible in combination with Regeneration from MoB/MoE. You can always count on it to proc without CC nullifying it. Only time I use the active is for an emergency when I know I can kite long enough and mitigate long enough to recover for the passive to come back, counting on Unholy Sanctuary and Soul Marks to keep from downing until then.

Necro is the dedicated slow casting aggro of pvp, those in practice situations won’t happen in any fights even vs noobs never not even in TDM , ICD is what makes SoV useless other than it not working in DS, the pool is first to change reduce it and allow the heals, we can adjust from there. I haven’t paid much attention to them but don’t they have test servers??

Necro is much like a pve boss, a boring hp sponge , major reason I dislike power necro and try to avoid Soul Reaping ,reduce the pool increase the regen to fasten the paste. I can’t emphasize enough how DS’s pool size is reducing the efforts of this thread and all the previous ones like it.

Reduce the pool!!!!

Sagat.3285:

Necro is the dedicated slow casting aggro of pvp, those in practice situations won’t happen in any fights even vs noobs never not even in TDM , ICD is what makes SoV useless other than it not working in DS, the pool is first to change reduce it and allow the heals, we can adjust from there. I haven’t paid much attention to them but don’t they have test servers??

Necro is much like a pve boss, a boring hp sponge , major reason I dislike power necro and try to avoid Soul Reaping ,reduce the pool increase the regen to fasten the paste. I can’t emphasize enough how DS’s pool size is reducing the efforts of this thread and all the previous ones like it.

Reduce the pool!!!!

ICD in of itself doesn’t make SoV is useless, but it would be overall a much better skill if SoV was proced on our hit (although I use it for on enemy hit in those stunlock/interrupt heavy situations), did passive damage and buffed you and nearby allies with the active life steal stacks rather than the target.

You have a point about trading pool for increased LF gain. It would fix a lot issues with LF management and our overall attrition. It really doesn’t matter how big your LF pool is. If you’re stuck outside of DS with little to no way to generate LF, then DS isn’t going to be of much use.

Bhawb.7408:

Without an ICD Vampiric will never, ever be useful to a non-wells build, and that is absurd to bar a major function of a tree to any build that isn’t wells.

And with ICD all vampiric traits will never, ever be useful.

Also, do the extra Vampiric Ritual procs seem really that outrageously good to you?
First of all, the max amount of siphons would be an exception to the rule. You might get those in zerg fights in WvW more regularly, but especially there they will pale in comparison to all the aoe healing from your allies.
Secondly, 6 points in Blood Magic. I can’t stress enough how much of a compromise that is. Even 4 points really. You either give up Soul Reaping, which is much better defense with or without healing through DS. Or you give up a huge amount of damage and other useful traits.

The way I see it, there needs to be full healing through DS, there needs to be more aoe scaling of healing and life force regeneration (that means no icds among other things), they should introduce completly new sources of healing that are baseline to every build like a #6 DS skill, there needs to be a doubling or trippling of every siphon value, and while they are at it they could double the amount of every main healing skill we have.
You think that sounds too much? Well, I think most necros are just too used to having absolutely no way of sustaining or recovering from serious pressure, and they are too chicken to admit to themselves how much of a significant healing buff we actually need.

Balekai.6083:

Sagat.3285:

Necro is the dedicated slow casting aggro of pvp, those in practice situations won’t happen in any fights even vs noobs *never* not even in TDM , ICD is what makes SoV useless other than it not working in DS, the pool is first to change reduce it and allow the heals, we can adjust from there. I haven’t paid much attention to them but don’t they have test servers??

Necro is much like a pve boss, a boring hp sponge , major reason I dislike power necro and try to avoid Soul Reaping ,reduce the pool increase the regen to fasten the paste. I can’t emphasize enough how DS’s pool size is reducing the efforts of this thread and all the previous ones like it.

*Reduce the pool!!!!*

ICD in of itself doesn’t make SoV is useless, but it would be overall a much better skill if SoV was proced on our hit (although I use it for on enemy hit in those stunlock/interrupt heavy situations), did passive damage and buffed you and nearby allies with the active life steal stacks rather than the target.

You have a point about trading pool for increased LF gain. It would fix a lot issues with LF management and our overall attrition. It really doesn’t matter how big your LF pool is. If you’re stuck outside of DS with little to no way to generate LF, then DS isn’t going to be of much use.

Compare it to war,thief and rev necro has the worst pool system ever.Those three can change their resources to a specific spec and affect all their skills actively due to low pool and active regen, they deserve their mitagations and sustain traits. Necro has reverse mana no rev doesn’t have mana,mana is high refills slowly and you don’t worry about it unless you are a wet noodle, they tried to make it friendly to spec but it’s size and importance forces the 1 spam and sustain out of it is miserable because you might have enough if not too bad.

Seriously initiative,adrenaline and energy are easily molded into spec due to versatility and *active* system, DS/LF is not that and makes necro an annoying pve mob that you just can’t skip. Worst designed class, I know they all have issues but necro takes the golden prize.

flow.6043:

Bhawb.7408:

Without an ICD Vampiric will never, ever be useful to a non-wells build, and that is absurd to bar a major function of a tree to any build that isn’t wells.

And with ICD all vampiric traits will never, ever be useful.

Every single useful life siphon in the game has an ICD right now, that is a fact. Leeching sigils, blood sigils, food, vampiric master, all have ICDs. If you buff vampiric to siphon 100 HP (or w/e works) with a 1s ICD, boom vampiric is suddenly useful, and it is consistently useful to every single build. If you leave it at 70 just because one build can proc it hundreds of times it will never be useful to anything other than the one best build.

Bhawb.7408:

Without an ICD Vampiric will never, ever be useful to a non-wells build, and that is absurd to bar a major function of a tree to any build that isn’t wells.

Wrong. Completely wrong.

This is where investment→ reward spectrum comes in. You only take Vampiric? You’re moderately invested. You should get moderate reward from that. For example, a condition build that has 4 points in Blood magic for, say, Mark of Evasion and Dagger mastery should get a usable reward. Say an optimization into Vampiric (significant investment, figure Bloodthirst for “optimization”) rewards ~300 health/second. Since it can, at most, proc 3/sec at average, this means a single proc would be 100 health (enhanced). A condition build without Bloodthirst would probably proc about 1.2 times/second for ~83 health per hit, or 100hp/second. Useable amount there, I would say. Not astounding, but good.

So, let’s say Vampiric got boosted to 83 healing at 200 healing power. Scaling and base values can be adjusted separately to balance, but for now, let’s stick with that value at that level of investment.

Vampiric Precision is currently ~25% stronger, so that proc would proportionally be boosted to 104. This trait requires even more investment than just the trait slot to make use of, due to requiring Precision. More investment should mean more reward.

In my build in the OP, optimized healing from these traits would be 487.2 health/second. Pretty good, but the investment in traits, skills, healing power, and Precision is high. Typical random condition build that nabbed Vampiric Precision and Vampiric for some reason? ~166.14 healing /second. Useful. And the opposite end is strong to reward the investment, but is not overpowering.

The only time it would be overpowering is if you were facing 5 enemies and four of them outright ignored you. In which case, you are punishing your foes for their stupidity.

flow.6043:

Bhawb.7408:

Without an ICD Vampiric will never, ever be useful to a non-wells build, and that is absurd to bar a major function of a tree to any build that isn’t wells.

And with ICD all vampiric traits will never, ever be useful.

Also, do the extra Vampiric Ritual procs seem really that outrageously good to you?
First of all, the max amount of siphons would be an exception to the rule. You might get those in zerg fights in WvW more regularly, but especially there they will pale in comparison to all the aoe healing from your allies.
Secondly, 6 points in Blood Magic. I can’t stress enough how much of a compromise that is. Even 4 points really. You either give up Soul Reaping, which is much better defense with or without healing through DS. Or you give up a huge amount of damage and other useful traits.

The way I see it, there needs to be full healing through DS, there needs to be more aoe scaling of healing and life force regeneration (that means no icds among other things), they should introduce completly new sources of healing that are baseline to every build like a #6 DS skill, there needs to be a doubling or trippling of every siphon value, and while they are at it they could double the amount of every main healing skill we have.
You think that sounds too much? Well, I think most necros are just too used to having absolutely no way of sustaining or recovering from serious pressure, and they are too chicken to admit to themselves how much of a significant healing buff we actually need.

It’s too much.

I don’t think it would be balanced to double/triple every necro life steal, double the power of all our self healing skills, add new sources of healing and more life force generation.

We would be unstoppable.

Vampiric Rituals could be kept off ICD and buffed by increasing the siphon, since rituals by there very nature are only area of effect and said trait has no impact on single target procs like vampiric/vampiric precision.

ICDed vampiric and vampiric precision could be very useful. Lets say vampiric/vampiric precision are stealing for 45 with no ICD currently in a siphon build you have. Say anet puts a 0.95 ICD on it, and buffed the healing from both to essentially what it would be for hitting 5 targets. Instead of 45 life steal it’s now 225 each with both on separate 0.95 ICDs.

So now your auto attacks are stealing 225 damage per second if you only use vampiric and 225-450 with vamp precision. Staff marks life steal for 225-445 health if you stagger them, to make up for the .20 seconds for ICD just in case. However, you don’t need to hit 5 enemies anymore to do so.

If this isn’t enough regen to make up for the investment in blood magic, increase the siphon to account for the fact burst regen wouldn’t be provided by vampiric or vampiric precision.

Bhawb.7408:

flow.6043:

Bhawb.7408:

Without an ICD Vampiric will never, ever be useful to a non-wells build, and that is absurd to bar a major function of a tree to any build that isn’t wells.

And with ICD all vampiric traits will never, ever be useful.

Every single useful life siphon in the game has an ICD right now, that is a fact. Leeching sigils, blood sigils, food, vampiric master, all have ICDs. If you buff vampiric to siphon 100 HP (or w/e works) with a 1s ICD, boom vampiric is suddenly useful, and it is consistently useful to every single build. If you leave it at 70 just because one build can proc it hundreds of times it will never be useful to anything other than the one best build.

I partially agree with this , I’ve seen more uses of leech and I used them myself in some builds. Those are offensive but defensive like SoV just no, compare it to Blinding Ashes of ele they changed it if an AoE burn hits multiple foes all of them get blinded not just one,that is good but something like Glamour treatment I will gladly bury my necro. About the glamours why didn’t they get the same treatment had to slap that 5 sec ICD, so smart!!

Keep in mind those are fixes, the green meat bag won’t allow real sustain even after. As long as each leech proc for foe hit it will work even on weapons, fixed proc also helps them improve LF gain and decrease it’s kitten pool.

Okay, time to re-calculate single-target siphoning with main-hand Axe and Axe Training. This actually hits faster than main-hand dagger, and cooldowns are different, so I will be adjusting a fair amount.

Restating the above values on hits/second casting:
Locust Swarm: 30 h/sc
Well of Suffering: 24 h/sc
Well of Corruption: 24 h/sc
Well of Darkness: 24 h/sc
Rending Claws: 2.11 h/sc
Ghastly Claws: 3.56 h/sc

Same priority is in place: Locust Swarm->#2-> wells-> auto.

Locust Swarm’s timing remains unchanged.

Ghastly Claws is cast at the .5, 9.25, 18, 26.75, 35.5, 44.25, and 53.25 second marks. This is 56 hits, with 28 crits, siphoning 4004 life/minute.

Order for wells is changed up, casting Well of Darkness at the 2.75 and 53 marks, Well of Corruption at the 3 second mark and 43.25 marks, and Well of Suffering at the 3.25 and 38.5 second mark.

Rending Claws cycle time is .95 seconds. 18.5 seconds are spent casting other skills, leaving this 41.25 seconds to cast for 43.42 cycles. This is 87 hits, ~43.5 crits for 2392.5 life siphoned per minute.

Total is 17413.5 health/minute or 290.23 health/second. This is the absolute max from a 50% crit chance build on a single target, and it does not include aftercast delays aside from axe auto. Actual healing/second is lower.

Average hits/second with max optimization? 3.583. Vampiric absolutely cannot trigger more than that/second on average against a single target. Including aftercasts, this drops to 3/second or lower. Including opponents who don’t let you just hit them as you please, this likely drops to 2-2.25 hits/second or lower.

i must avert my eyes ~