Guild Wars 2

Gain retaliation for 5 seconds when you heal.

First: Is this just for using the Healing skill or is it literally every single heal?
Secondly: is there any cool down on this Death Magic trait?

What brings this question up is the possible combination of Spiteful Vigor and Vampiric.

A concept Dagger/Dagger Power Build (which I’ll link below) has sprung to mind but I know almost nothing about the PVP half of this game. As most of the necromancer complaints seem to be about damage (or rather lack thereof) I wonder if it’s possible to simply leave the enemy in a no-win situation. Something that might not be quick, but nevertheless has a high chance of ending in the necromancer’s favor.

The scenario playing out in my mind is a necromancer rushing his target via the speed-enhancing traits and Locust Swarm, dropping wells one after the other, and quickly digging in with the daggers to begin healing. However, as it has been pointed out that the combined effort of all the vampiric traits amounts to little, the important part of this idea is to keep the Retaliation from Spiteful Vigor up permanently.

Dark Pact, Spectral Grasp, and Signet of Spite would be used to keep the target from being able to flee. One to stop, one to drag back kicking and screaming, and one to cut their movement enough that they can’t hope to retreat. Held in place I imagine they would fight back which would hopefully lead to an almost certain victory.

Each time I attack I heal. Each time they attack they hurt themselves. Or so the theory goes. Even if the above questions turn out to be unfavorable to the idea, perhaps there’s a way to salvage it? Or maybe some more experienced players can tell me why it’s best to abandon the concept now.

I hesitate to look at focusing on Staff because of how buggy everything seems to be regarding its traits but I imagine if this turns out to be futile I’ll have to fall back on the hopes of that and a condition build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fQEQRBIRhG2IkW1elmxG/eCQ6Rz8i9kis1GSRv2C;TwAA1Ctoyxk

Or, because of the semicolon:
http://tinyurl.com/8c9b6nx

It’s healing skill as far as I know. Siphoning life is never considered a heal.

That’s a shame, but I rather expected it. I suppose it does still leave Siphon Life, though, as it actually says Healing per Pulse. But even with dagger mastery it’s on a 10 second cool down, so retaliation would be up and down every five seconds about.

In a perfect world where Necromancers were somewhat decent you could go 30 into Spite for the power and Spiteful Spirit. And then 30 into Soul Reaping for Near to Death, so you’d have Retaliation pretty much 60% of the time.

But we don’t live in a perfect world. Just making those 2 traits synergize will leave you with close to no toughness or vitality, which you need to make the retaliation practical.

You can thank our ludicrously stat spread trait lines for that. WHY DOES SOUL REAPING HAVE CRIT DAMAGE??

I could be wrong, but I do think that Blood Fiend triggers it twice.