Guild Wars 2

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

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.

For that amount of optimization of gear, build and skill use, what Drarnor originally stated still holds true after his new calculations. In a perfect world of 290.23 health per second as an absolute max benefit, it’s too low. Considering Regeneration in the same build/gear is 263 health per second (if 1054 healing power in original build link still holds true) whenever its up.

To get viable use of siphons by investing 15-30 points in Blood Magic, we shouldn’t need to perfectly use every single quick, multiple hitting skill in our possession to get an 30-40 extra health per second over regeneration (on paper). Especially when by doing so, we’re sacrificing ways to apply regeneration or get better effective health/regen over time through other means.

Whether you’re for an ICD or not, it’s pretty clear that siphons need to be buffed further if they’re truly going to be an attrition alternative for Necro. An alterative that can be fully invested in.

I would still like to see the one second ICD with the much bigger siphon, to eliminate all that micro managing involved and the vast difference in effectiveness based on what weapons or skills are used and when. It’s not as exciting or interactive, but its definitely more dependable and would make blood magic useful for all builds and attacks. Other profession mechanics aren’t that undependable or incorrectly designed to the point where investing in a whole trait line for it’s main feature is utterly counter productive.

Edit: I guess the question to ask is, if Anet ever intends or intended for life steal to be a viable attrition that we could rely on over DS use and investment? It’s possible its purposely designed as a supplementary attrition mechanic, which would be unfortunate.

The actual in-game healing power for that build is 868. Not sure why the huge discrepency for the build editor. 263 health/second is based off of the 868, though.

Only problem with an ICD to make siphons more “dependable” is that, by their very nature, siphons are volatile. They require hitting your opponent and, in many cases, an additional requirement. Adding an ICD does not remove this volatility, just limits the upper range. It’s like taking a bell curve, then chopping off everything above one standard deviation. It doesn’t help the deviation below in the slightest.

To balance siphons properly, you need to balance around the mean, not the “if the planets align” situations. They will always be volatile by their very nature. I argue to embrace that and, while balancing them around the expected, let them have their awesome moments when they do show up.

Still, regardless of how they are buffed, the numbers are pretty clear that the payoff is freaking awful for the investment.

Hmm if they could get it right, balancing around the mean without the ICD would be ideal.

Again I have a hard time thinking of a way around balancing an ICD siphon after taking away spike life steal, without making the siphon too high that it starts acting like a high damage irremovable condition-like effect, that heals the caster…

Then there’s the issue of losing that ability to spike steal in of itself. Right now being able to spike multiple life steals at one time when you need it, is sort of the saving grace of those traits at the moment.

Honestly it might be better to try increasing the life steal without an ICD first and see how it goes. If it turns out just increasing life steal amounts further without ICDs is too powerful, then I guess the nerf bat or ICD function is never too far from the tree. :P

Balekai.6083:

Hmm if they could get it right, balancing around the mean without the ICD would be ideal.

Again I have a hard time thinking of a way around balancing an ICD siphon after taking away spike life steal, without making the siphon too high that it starts acting like a high damage irremovable condition-like effect, that heals the caster…

Then there’s the issue of losing that ability to spike steal in of itself. Right now being able to spike multiple life steals at one time when you need it, is sort of the saving grace of those traits at the moment.

Honestly it might be better to try increasing the life steal without an ICD first and see how it goes. If it turns out just increasing life steal amounts further without ICDs is too powerful, then I guess the nerf bat or ICD function is never too far from the tree. :P

If the damage portion becomes problematic, they can always nerf the damage while keeping the healing. The values, while they currently have identical values, are not linked. Sigil of Blood, for example, heals for 1 more than the damage it deals, and the healing scales with healing power while the damage doesn’t scale at all.

That’s true and was thinking of that as a solution, but came to the conclusion that when it comes to an ICD life steal, trying to artificially account for only the loss of spike siphon healing has issues too. It runs into a similar problem as the damage side of things, where you basically have a high regen effect that’s difficult to counter. So it becomes too powerful in 1v1 situations, because it’s balanced around encompassing life steal potential against 5+ targets hitting them with multiple proc skills.

The easiest thing to do would be to ignore that loss of burst regen and hope the consistent life steal (including more focused damage) over time makes up for it.

Or, like you suggest, leave the ICD out of the equation. That way we never encounter that high damaging condition-like life steal, because siphon damage is still diluted over many hits/procs. The healing portion can naturally scale with the amount of targets hit. The only problem again is that you need to make siphons viable for single proc builds, while not making them too OP for multi proc builds.

Either way, it probably would be best for Anet to drop the parity between power and healing power base/scaling on our life steals more if necessary. It may look a bit wonky or artificially tweaked, but life steal mechanics are one of those things with so many variables that it has to be considered.

Assuming life steals get addressed again.

I love how we seem to get closer and closer to expansion, we necros seem to get more and more vocal.

TheLastNobody.8319:

I love how we seem to get closer and closer to expansion, we necros seem to get more and more vocal.

get excited bro.

I think the downstate fixes were just a start.

NeXeD.3042:

TheLastNobody.8319:

I love how we seem to get closer and closer to expansion, we necros seem to get more and more vocal.

get excited bro.

I think the downstate fixes were just a start.

I can’t take this seriously sorry. I don’t think necro changed/improved much from start compared to others. While it’s sure they have to put some changes in patches I picture them debating of what to add for necro section to make it look like they didn’t forget about them. It’s not like threads like this one haven’t appeared since start.

I still stand by my belief that the best patch would the reduction of DS pool to promote active gameplay and bury it’s position as an excuse for our lacking concept. I am not looking forward to HoT patches with decent hope.

while i havent done some in game testing my self i did use a build calculator online.

By using only dagger auto attacks (that can cleave trough 2 oppionents at a time) and by using only the bloodthirst/vampiric traits one can heal for 296 health /second

Life syphon skill heals for 3771 health in 3,5seconds, that would be 1078 health /second

This is without any healing power gear and not counting any critical hits that could trigger vampiric precision .

On top of that one can use Blood fiend and get 309 health/second as well as mark of blood, reapers touch and other traits that can grant regeneration.

Perhaps its not the guardians virtue of resolve, or warriors healing signet+adrenal health… but in combination with some other traits, gear or wells it can in fact grant a necromancer a massive spike in health.

Try looking over the calculations I just did. 296 health/second from siphoning traits is actually impossible.

Life Siphon healing for 3771 health per cast is a maximum of 287.86 health/second, assuming you traited for cooldowns. otherwise, it’s 243.29 health/second. Still good, but you need to know how to calculate healing/second. Also, impossible to get that without healing power in your build. My posted build just barely breaks 4k and has fairly high healing power along with Bloodthirst amping it up by 20%. Life Siphon scales quite well.

was using this http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQJAoIigbAmMUA-TBBXgAAK/C1D0r+zjSQA-e

also, bloodthirst doesnt modify the numbers on vampiric and vamp precision traits so i manually added the 20% in my calculations.
It does show on life syphon skill corectly tho

And when i calculated the dagger auto attacks i assumed it was used on 2 mobs.

then you get something like this:

Vampiric healing=31 health
bloodthirst = 20% of vampiric trait
= 31 x20 = 620 /100= 6,231= 37healing

Dagger auto atack chain hits 4 times up to 2 targets, thats 8 hits (like i said i assumed a the necro hits 2 targets)

8x 37=296 healing /second (cause the auto attack chain lasts for 1 second no?)

same goes with life syphon. with bloodthirst it says it heals for 374 per hit.
It hits 9 times so 9x 374= 3366
The tooltip doesnt show or include vampiric traits, so thats a additional 37*9=333 health

3366+333=3699 (not sure how i got 3771 last time ..strange?)
3699/3,5=1058 health per second

Eddit: The reason my first calculations was slightly higher was cause i used Vampiric precisions healing instead of the minor trait Vampiric healing, which is slightly higher

Dagger auto chain lasts 2.1 seconds. That’s one of your biggest mistakes. Your number gets reduced by more than half, there.

Life Siphon, I can see where you got it from. When you said “without healing power” that should mean “without point as in Blood Magic” as well. My calculations above are all based on a single target (separate calculations for more).

NeXeD.3042:

TheLastNobody.8319:

I love how we seem to get closer and closer to expansion, we necros seem to get more and more vocal.

get excited bro.

I think the downstate fixes were just a start.

Inside is a rant so warning, lots of negativity in general about the necromancer state.

Just sorta wanted to get that off my chest. Love necros, love what we’re SUPPOSED TO BE, love what we CAN do, just don’t love where we are and where other classes are in comparison.

actually i said “without healing power GEAR”… cant count vampiric traits without using the healing power you gain by spending points in the trait line…

Vukorep.3081:

actually i said “without healing power GEAR”… cant count vampiric traits without using the healing power you gain by spending points in the trait line…

No, but you can count Life Siphon the skill without that. Which is what was being discussed.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

If the damage portion becomes problematic, they can always nerf the damage while keeping the healing. The values, while they currently have identical values, are not linked. Sigil of Blood, for example, heals for 1 more than the damage it deals, and the healing scales with healing power while the damage doesn’t scale at all.

This give me the urge to say : Let the kitten damage part scale with the kitten healing power!!!
And I’m sure people will say “no way!”.

Overall, I’m not for any ICD but I think the actual value could be bearable If necromancers had access to a passive (non-boon) heal over-time. And, honestly, if necromancers end up with siphon healing working while in DS, Necromancer would rock in optimal situation (just life transfer could heal the necromancer for 4k ><’ . It would be delightfull but at the same time totally OP).
In wvw I’m playing usually a 04343 spectral build and I can garantee that this would be totally broken. Just the though of it could give me a b…

So yeah, I really think, the best way to balance would be a passive heal over time out of DS. It doesn’t need to be a lot but, it should be enough to mitigate the fact that the necromancer can’t Hit foes 100% of the time. If I look at the siphon value that have been shared, I’d say, it should be beetween 100 and 150/hps. This could be a trait that replace cough cough unholy martyr cough cough

In GW1, life stealing wasn’t very useful either, people just liked it because it added a flat amount of damage to every hit.

So instead of looking at it as a form of healing, how well does it do as a source of damage? You’d need to find 3 points to put into blood, and get bloodthirst. I’ve been running 6/5/0/3/0 . I’m not too sure of its effectiveness, but its pretty fun to see so many numbers crammed together when you have wells and locust swarm going.

It is even worse as a form of damage. With the exception of minions, and arguably Vampiric Rituals (assuming they buffed it appropriately), it just doesn’t really give you much damage compared to the power trifecta. For example, Vampiric does 50 damage, which is only a 5% damage boost to a 1k hit. That is really small.

dood.7526:

In GW1, life stealing wasn’t very useful either, people just liked it because it added a flat amount of damage to every hit.

Saddest part? Life stealing in GW1 was more effective. And I’m talking straight numbers here. The Vampiric trait at max steals 46 health with full traiting. Vampiric Gaze in GW1 stole 49 health with only 10 Blood Magic (full 16 stole 63).

A GW2 Necro has about 40 times the health of a GW1 Necro.

If you think life steal wasn’t useful you obviously never played a touch necro running around tanking entire groups of players with ease while still dealing good damage (until a piece of kitten mesmer showed up).

Necromancer is pathetic Jesus Christ this really gives everyone some perspective on where we are lacking.