Guild Wars 2

My necro was a full time blood magic user back in GW1. Back then blood magic was underpowered forever, since it ignores armor and can be used to spike in GvG. Most vampiric skills were very easy to use. Just case it and steals health.

For years I had argued that the life stealing should be done as DoT, so they cannot be used for spiking. Hitting a foe once should lead to 5 seconds of small life stealing, for example. And for years I had said that vampiric skills should be much harder to use but much stronger.

And then we come to GW2. Blood magic has downgraded even worst than before. The damage is still done on a per hit bases, so its damage have to be low to prevent spiking. And the worst part, the life stealing is now tied to the auto attack. Which means they are even easier to use than back in GW1. Back in GW1, at least the player had to managed energy.

As long as vampiric continues to be dealt per hit, and is this easy to use, they will continue to suck.

Let’s cut to the cheese of what I envision vampiric to be. I will provide one example skill.

Vampiric Leap
Required: Grandmaster Blood Magic (cannot use this skill without this rank)
Placement: F2 next to Death Shroud. Cannot use this skill while in Death Shroud.
Range: 1,200
Recharge: 30s
Cast Time: 1s (with obvious animation)
Type: Channeling Skill
Description: Leaps rapidly at target foe. If hit, your target foe suffers from Stun for 6 seconds (cannot move or use skills). You suffer from immobilized for 4 seconds. For 4 seconds of channeling, every 1/2 second you steal life equal to 1/2 of your healing power. This channelling can be interrupt from the outside or stun breaks.

Why this works? The skill itself is hard to hit. Its 1 second cast time and animation means the necro need to snare the foe. After hitting, it can still be interrupted and stun break countered. Healing Power does not directly increase the damage of the necromancer, and the Grandmaster requirement means the necro need to trait for it and sacrifice on other things. But when it works, it does a lot of life stealing. You also get extra 2 seconds to attack that foe afterwards. High risk, high reward.

I don’t understand why going 15+ into a healing power trait line and taking three lifesteal traits is so weak compared to food.

This… Isn’t really the problem in a nutshell. It’s a nutshell, the bowl around the nutshell, the table the bowl’s on, the room the table’s in and the house the room’s in.

If it was actually in a nutshell, it would be “Vampiric cannot provide strong returns because it procs off literally everything you do”.

Personally? I don’t see that as a problem. Maybe a bit of normalisation so it isn’t so affected by your attack speed, but even that’s unnecessary because it makes weapon selection with Vampiric in mind Actually A Thing. It’s a minor trait; it’s not something that you’re supposed to base your entire build around.

If any change needs to happen to Vampiric, it needs to be given some higher scaling.

Do other changes need to happen to the Blood Magic line in general? Sure, it could use a little shifting about. Do we need more active draining abilities? That’d be pretty cool too, but they won’t happen until we get new weapons, utilities or traits. If you want a discussion on the Blood Magic line, say “yeah this blood magic line it’s pretty rubbish innit” in the subject line.

Thanks for the softcore, by the way.

Was that picture really necessary?

Other then that…OK, first I will admit I was a minion muncher back in GW1 and not a blood necro so maybe my experience isn’t as valid but…

Rather then being bothered by how life stealing is applied, shouldn’t you be more worried that even though everything you do causes a life steal, its effect is still weak?

You know every time a warrior sneezes he causes huge damage. Every time a guardian farts hes healing himself. Every time a ranger roleplays, hes doing a evade, ect ect…The difference is that these things make a real difference and life steals don’t.

The only two life steals that make a big difference are Dagger number 2, and Locust Signet. The rest are just weak. The only advantage is that they are a bit of extra damage for tank builds. (PS: The scaling with Healing is not worth it, don’t do Cleric.) But this isn’t a defining thing. No one thinks their life steals are critical to their build. Not even my vampiric well build needs life steals. Not like guards need healing or Rangers need evades.

Outright changing the life steal mechanic as this point is asking a bit much. It would be nice though if life steals increased dmg and healing to a point that was noticeable.

I think that this Vampiric Leap is a cool idea, I’d change 2 things though:
6 sec stun… way too much, not sure if you’d need that anyway if you get immobilized as well.
8x life steal for 1/2 of healing power: not good enough, make that at least 1:1 in addidtion to a base amount.

+1 for the les yay.
And in my opinion, it should plain be the same as in a few quite older RPGs, hard tied to either how you build (so all stats influence how you siphon) or be tied to resources (wink wink nudge nudge turn vampiric into siphon more the less LF you got).

This idea sounds like dagger #3, then dagger #2 but stronger and easier to land.

BTW necromancers are not vampires

vicious.5683:

BTW necromancers are not vampires

Well the other quarters of necros that aint fascinated with dead rats and black ghost sperm or making foes suddenly have multiple diseases and/or symptoms you get from old age were technically all weird puppet monster teleportation thingys (the original wells and all skills that didnt fit into one of the easy to explain why sections) or bloodsuckers (aka your Doctor, your Lawyer or a pesky and very touchy mosquito).

Vampiric would be ok if you could heal in shroud.

Shroud skills fire really slow anyways. And healing in shroud even a tiny but could allow you to buy some time waiting for cool downs. The class still has little mobility and bad stun breaks. The class is still weak to burst, vampiric in DS wolnt change that. Tiny heals protect mostly against conditions which the class is already good at.

It wouldn’t be broken to let necromancer heal in shroud.

vicious.5683:

This idea sounds like dagger #3, then dagger #2 but stronger and easier to land.

BTW necromancers are not vampires

No, they are not Bram Stoker’s undead monster who drinks the blood of the living to sustain itself.

Vampire in this context refers not so much to the act of blood drinking but, rather, sustaining one’s self by stealing the life of one’s enemies. As this is functionally similar to what the classic vampire does, it’s much easier to simply call necros of this ilk “vampires”. They could just as easily be referred to as “siphoners” or “blood mages”; but the community settled on “vampire”.

I see a lot of issues in what you suggest, things that i personnally don’t like and things that devs obviously don’t like.

issues :
- Channeling skill are way to easy to break. and, well, we already have dagger #2 that do this.
- F2. We have already enough things with death shroud. IU would be horrible with anything more.

What i don’t like :
- tying a skill to a trait line and requiring it so you have 30 point in this trait line (probably worst idea ever)
- Even if dev agreed to this, they would broke it by their totally absurd double scalling thing. (“Oh god I’ve got a super idea! let scale siphon damage on power and healing damage on healing power! it would be soooo great”… Maybe your idea is second, this one is definitely the worst)
- 4 second immobilisation is OP… Only a warrior would consider this like a given.

Dev position :
- “No way we give a leap or anything that give mobility to Necromancer! They are way to resilient with Death shroud, they don’t need mobility or anything that could give them other way to survive then Death shroud.”

For someone who’s played GW1 Necromancer, you sure designed a skill that doesn’t even suit ANet’s style of Necromancers. It’s pretty bad to be honest, and having played a Blood Necromancer in GW1, I’m guessing you really didn’t play a Blood Necromancer and you’re just …..nevermind.

I can’t get past the “leaps rapidly” as I imagine a repetitive leap attack, but with how the game would probably display this, you’d leap to your target and do bunny hops – essentially humping your target. Wonderful.

Blood Necromancers had to sacrifice their own health as part of a spell cost, and unfortunately that isn’t part of the game mechanics here. Blood Necromancers could do awesome stuff so long as they were smart and knew how to manage their health & energy – you had to be a good player because there was high risk for high reward.

Honestly with the way skills are all about activation time and cool down with no apparent cost, you’d have to create a skill with a secondary skill that gives you the option of improving the skills potency by sacrificing a percentage of your health.

Hmm……now that’d be interesting, and would fit the Necromancers theme. Blood Renewal was one of my favorite skills in GW1 because you sacrificed 33% of your life for some health regen. If the boon lasted its duration, you were healed for twice the health you sacrificed.

Another good idea for a skill would be, say, a mark that links you to your target, does some damage, causes weakness/vulnerability/cripple/whateveryoupickoneortwo, and then the second chain skill would be like ’sacrifice life over X seconds channeled to drain life from target. If duration is uninterrupted you get Y damage as life."

I think that’d be a decent start – you got your plain ol’ skill that isn’t useless, followed by a chain skill that forces you to be uninterrupted, otherwise all that sacrifice was for naught. If you pull it off, you get some life back and you caused damage.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

vicious.5683:

This idea sounds like dagger #3, then dagger #2 but stronger and easier to land.

BTW necromancers are not vampires

No, they are not Bram Stoker’s undead monster who drinks the blood of the living to sustain itself.

Vampire in this context refers not so much to the act of blood drinking but, rather, sustaining one’s self by stealing the life of one’s enemies. As this is functionally similar to what the classic vampire does, it’s much easier to simply call necros of this ilk “vampires”. They could just as easily be referred to as “siphoners” or “blood mages”; but the community settled on “vampire”.

Look at the picture at the end of the first post

MercenaryK, I know very well about life sacrifices in GW1. Blood is Power was one of my favourite elites. Blood Renewal is also one of my staple skills. I used to use Dark Aura in Hard Mode dungeons and win.

But life sacrifice is a different topic. Right now I am talking about vampiric and life stealing.

GW1’s life stealing was very badly implemented, and has never been fixed. Due to spiking in GvG, its armor ignoring damage have to be very low. And most life stealing skills are mindless fire and forget.

Look at Vampiric Gaze, the prime example of the problems with vampiric in GW1. It got low damage and takes very little player ability to use. You don’t have to time it or wait for an opportunity. You just spam it on recharge.

Once again, this problem was never fixed in GW1. And its even worst in GW2. The vampiric in GW2 is even lower damage and even easier to use.

This all could be fixed by changing life stealing into Duration of Time and making these skills more difficult to use. I had been saying this for years, no joke.

Blood mages in GW1 were super rare because they aren’t effective. Most necro pick the more effective Death Magic for minions or Curses for Spiteful Spirit. And in GW2, blood mages hare pretty much went extinct. Well no surprise. Necro in general has went extinct in high level dungeons (e.g. Fractal level 48+). But those few necros that you see are always berserker power and condition. Obviously they got pretty much nothing in blood magic.

flow.6043:

I think that this Vampiric Leap is a cool idea, I’d change 2 things though:
6 sec stun… way too much, not sure if you’d need that anyway if you get immobilized as well.
8x life steal for 1/2 of healing power: not good enough, make that at least 1:1 in addidtion to a base amount.

The stun must last at least the full duration of the life stealing. Else anyone can just interrupt the channeling while they are getting hit. The idea is that when the victim gets hits by Vampiric Leap, he/she is put into a hypnosis state and cannot fight back at all.

The only way out is stun breaks or help from an ally.

But yes the extra 2 seconds of stun after can be removed. Maybe replace that with Might for the necro and Weakness for the target foe instead.

Kraag Deadsoul.2789:

vicious.5683:

This idea sounds like dagger #3, then dagger #2 but stronger and easier to land.

BTW necromancers are not vampires

No, they are not Bram Stoker’s undead monster who drinks the blood of the living to sustain itself.

Vampire in this context refers not so much to the act of blood drinking but, rather, sustaining one’s self by stealing the life of one’s enemies. As this is functionally similar to what the classic vampire does, it’s much easier to simply call necros of this ilk “vampires”. They could just as easily be referred to as “siphoners” or “blood mages”; but the community settled on “vampire”.

Well if we go back to lore, the blood mage plays around with life itself. It is always about blood sacrifices for power. To make up for the life loses, they steal life from their enemies to fuel their magic.

By lore, a well played blood mage should beat other professions that doesn’t require any life sacrifices. A badly played blood mage would get him/herself killed fast. It is the ultimate high risk / high reward profession. The “Dark Aura Bomber” from GW1 would be a prime example of a blood mage.

The closest that necromancer in GW1 got to being a vampire would be Vampiric Touch and Vampiric Bite. Although that is actually a touch skill, meaning that the life stealing happens from the hand. So it is more like a spell than an actual bite.

I don’t know, but I’d be happy to remove the 25 point Blood Trait and replace it with the 30 point trait that removes conditions by pets. With a slight change:

Minions and Wells remove conditions periodically

Minions : 1/10 sec per minion
Wells : 1/1-2 pulses

Makes both worthwhile and with the well Trait at 30 they can pulse to do more damage and healing to you while removing conditions. Can make some interesting play.

New 30 trait

Your Blood Pet now heals allies a small amount of it’s heal.

Heals 30% of it’s heal in a 1200 radius.

It fires pretty slowly and with +heal you can make that pet siphon enough to not only heal you, but other players and the pets. Making it easier to keep some pets up in pve and pvp.

My heal now is around 1k per strike with clerics. That makes it give me and anyone around an extra 300. The heal would show as 1,000 then 300 after. Then any heal from siphoning afterwards (Mine is around 100).

This is somewhat similar to what my Mesmer can do now with mantras and their traits, traited to our heal button. On the plus side you can sacrifice the Pet and do the same. Mine is around 4k+ heal that would give me the 4k an additional 1,200 and 1,200 to everyone around me. Also makes us be better at supporting with Deathshroud healing.

Kushinade.9034:

I don’t know, but I’d be happy to remove the 25 point Blood Trait and replace it with the 30 point trait that removes conditions by pets. With a slight change:

Or plain, allies in 600 range are healed for – insert number around 50 that scales with your hp – each time you siphon life.

P.S. despite how funny it is, i think that more softcore will get the thread closed.

Kushinade.9034:

I don’t know, but I’d be happy to remove the 25 point Blood Trait and replace it with the 30 point trait that removes conditions by pets. With a slight change:

A good idea, but being a minor trait thats too specific and would be just as bad as Protection of the Horde. Deep blood certainly has the traits to support well and minion builds, but minors shouldn’t make this assumption.

True however I have no idea where you’d be able to place that idea at except by making the finals do them instead. Wells removing conditions on pulses when they siphon, and minions removing conditions and blood pet healing….actually that’s not bad. Leave it just like that and i’d be happy with my siphon by utilizing my blood pet or well more.
I have to track my blood pet anyways now and sac it at the right times now and time my cd’s I wouldn’t mind getting extra use out of him

The problem with vampiric and the blood line in general in a “nut shell” is that you as a player have virtually no control over its effectiveness. In any other mmo and in many instances in gw2 you get gear with stats that compliment your build and it increases the effect of the spells that correlate to the build. With the siphon talents you can stack all the + healing you want and will get very little effect (5 to 7 HP per hit). The fact that even exists in this fashion is beyond unacceptable. If power or any other fascet of the game scaled like this heads would roll.

True. But even that little bit seems helpful. It is NOT much true and i’d like to have it be a bit higher for what you get, but even that small amount is still 35-49 health per hit. They come in pretty fast as well along with what I siphon.

I’d love to have it higher but if we had that siphon idea to my blood pet that would up that to around 335-349 at a time. That is a huge improvement.

Granted i’d take upping the heal/damage a bit with gear. Maybe double what it is now.