Guild Wars 2

Necromancers being the class that was meant to be the only one to have fear, they turned out to be the ones with the weakest fear available to them. On top of that the necromancer was supposed to be the class that had healing based on attacking – health syphon. It’s the idea, which explains the lack of regen we have, we were meant to be big on life syphon, it was even one of the featured videos before the game was released, however we lack in that aspect.

The thief has a healing spell called Signet of Malice, at Lv80 the passive heals for 100HP with every attack and heals for about 3,500HP with a 15 second cooldown without being traited (sure low heal but it has a minuscule cooldown).

So, the thief is able to syphon 100HP on each attack, the necro has a minor trait which does the same thing, healing with each attack… however at Lv80 you only heal 24HP with each attack. How come that the thief has a better health syphon than a necromancer? That’s not all however, think about what health syphon really means – healing with each attack.

The necromancer has a habit of slow attacks, such as the staff, scepter, etc. At best we have the dagger which attacks at a relatively fast pace. The thief however is all about quick and multiple blows, with the shortbow’s auto attack bouncing between targets to the daggers having a flurry of quick multiple strikes – pistol whip for example hits 9 times in a matter of 3 seconds while dazing the foe. That is a good 900HP healed in 3 seconds… as a thief!

On the other hand the necromancer attacks much slower and with less targets and to top it all off, our health syphon is less. I would understand us having a lower health syphon if we attacked what… 4 times faster than the thief? But it’s almost the exact opposite. With my 24HP per hit health syphon on average I heal 60HP per second while the thief heals much more.

Of course you can say we have more health syphon to pile up on that, such as health syphon on critical hits, minions stealing health and wells syphoning health, but isn’t it a bit ridiculous how we need to have at least some 3-4 abilities up so we can heal maybe the same amount a thief can heal with only 1 ability up?

Critical hit health syphon heals 35HP, wells healing with each tick heals about 33HP. It saddens me that the health syphon class can barely syphon anything that’s worth investing so much in to. While a thief can syphon much much MUCH more than us with only one skill.

I would adore to be able to effectively play syphoning health, unfortunately that simply isn’t possible – well not as a necromancer at least. In fact I was a bit shocked when I made my thief and went into PvP and saw the amount it syphoned, I thought it was too good to be true with my previous experience with a 24HP health syphon per hit. I had to test it out to see if there wasn’t something wrong, and no, it steals 100HP.

I beg of Anet to please, please make the necromancer’s health syphoning abilities more viable, it’s sad to see such a fun and unique aspect of our class being so nearly useless.

So does Guardian with their Greatsword heals on attack trait. I think ele gets a passive heal on spellcast too. Just reroll.

Before anything else:
You’re comparing traits to a dedicated heal skill. Once a thief picks signet of malice, that’s their major heal. And they lose /all/ of that healing when it’s on cooldown.

Really, the Necromancer’s ‘life siphon’ is tied much more closely to the Death Shroud mechanic. You build up a bar of life Force and switch into it, eating a few hits with it before you switch back and build up that buffer again.

Ugh, i so wish they did not have two mechanics that was so similarly named and behaved. People seem to conflate or confuse the two all the time (for time to to time i have to remind myself that the underwater weapon effects are life siphon, not health siphon).

Oh and that guardian trait looks like an insult to guardians. 25 heal only with a GS? And it is one of their two grandmaster majors for that trait line? I really do wonder how many guardians actually use it as part of their build.

Good news for the guardians they only have like 15k health compared to my 20k+ depending on what armor im using and traits.

I’m wondering, while in DS, do all these life siphon skills like heal on crit and wells or what have you, do they restore HP while in DS?

Well if I am not mistaken, a D/D ele siphons even more hp per hit than a thief (haven’t played it for a long time, but about ~120 i think?), also you forgot to mention GS guardian that heals slightly more than necromancer. But actually its not the vampiric type of skills that are the ones that bother me, it is actually our fear, as you all may have noticed, we have the worst fear of any other profession – thief steals our fear makes it aoe, for 3 sec, war has his fear bomb for 4 seconds i believe, even rangers pet wolf has a better fear in comparison to our…

No they do nthing while you’re in DS.
I dsiagree with what OP says about no regen. We can get constant regen.
But I agree on the life siphon being crap.

just remember that with minion u gain 38* minions number life!! (not sure about 38)

Kisses.1054:

No they do nthing while you’re in DS.
I dsiagree with what OP says about no regen. We can get constant regen.
But I agree on the life siphon being crap.

I didn’t say we have no regen, I said we lack in regen. As far as abilities go I believe we have only the focus’ attack with the bouncing scythe which gives regen to an ally randomly, not even necessarily us.

Italyguy.4128:

I’m wondering, while in DS, do all these life siphon skills like heal on crit and wells or what have you, do they restore HP while in DS?

Nope, and it’s sort of contradicting.

Some of our survivability is based on our constant regen/healing yet going into DS basically cancels out some of our survivability for, some other survivability.

Sometimes I wish our DS/life force mechanic was more like Mordekaiser’s passive.

Sparda.9750:

just remember that with minion u gain 38* minions number life!! (not sure about 38)

Topping out at around 6*38 with blood fiend, two bone minions, bone fiend, shadow fiend and flesh golem.

thief might have better health regen but we got atrition once we got a thief locked down there’s absolutly no way they can get away from us. it’s not like they have shadowstep or bow 1800 range teleports it just takes a press of a f1 button and the number 2 key and we can close that gap in no time.

Nice one barti.

There is no concept for the classes, sure you can read claims of it but when you actually look at classes skills you see Anet seems to have randomly giving some classes everything while making sure other classes had jack kitten be it might be too strong.

Have u tried dagger 2# ? it gives me around 300 per tick but at the end im really careless about these little heals.

I actually don’t see this being much of a problem at all. Necro’s have many ways to syphon HP, not just one.
Not only can the dagger syphon HP, but you can get traits that do the following:

Syphon HP every time you hit
Syphon HP every time you crit
Syphon HP every time your minions hit
Increase HP Syphon effectiveness by 50%
Wells Syphon HP every time they pulse.

Stacking multiple of these traits can give you some impressive self healing/life stealing. If you were to buff them as they are now, Necro’s could stack most of these and become HP regen machines.
Lets not forget about the other self healing traits they have as well, such as getting healed every time a foe you have tagged dies.
A single necro syphon might not do much, but putting some of them together can create some seriously good combos.
Lets not forget the Thief skill is a self heal, they are sacrificing good healing for a small bit of regen and when they use their self heal they are out of that syphon until it recharges. All of these necro skills are traits, meaning they are going to be active 24/7 and I can freely choose my self heal to fit my play style.

As someone who plays a necro myself, I can see why they don’t heal as much. It would be pretty out of control if you stacked most of these with high recovering syphons.

P.S: My syphon per hit alone is about 60-70 (Without the 50% increase). I don’t know how you’re getting only 20-30 per hit. Perhaps Healing Power effects this?

While stacking them gives results, things quickly become all or nothing. You either go down blood magic to stack up on heals, our you forgo them completely as piecemeal ends up going nowhere. Remember that we are talking 30 points worth of traits here, that can be spent elsewhere. Tho i guess this is a bit of a problem for necro in general, we either have to go all in with one kind of ability, DS, minion, life steal, or the results will be less than favorable. Also, with the thief siphon being a utility, they can swap it in and out between fights if they find it to not be working to their benefit. And also the cooldown is 15 seconds. Not a lot for someone that can potentially heal when stealthed as well.

ExVoodoo.7586:

Syphon HP every time you hit
Syphon HP every time you crit
Syphon HP every time your minions hit
Increase HP Syphon effectiveness by 50%
Wells Syphon HP every time they pulse.

every time you hit 15 blood trait have to spec 15 into bloodmagicfor this
everytime you crit cost a trait
minions hit cost a trait also forces you into mm road with all its shortcommings
siphon effectiveness by 50% also a trait
well siphon hp everytime they pulse also cost a trait racking up 4 needed traits to get this set up where only 3 is possible as far as i know off..

the fact is that its not enough by a longshot the hp per hit and the minions hp per hit are near neglectable with stuf hitting you for 1k and the massive burst that can lead up to 10k+ on a constant basis. the well siphon is broken i mean 21 hp per pulse.. seriously.. and thats a grandmaster trait thats just sad imo. the only way you can get some decnt healing from a necromancer is to go full support and use bloodmark well of blood and reapers touch and this is with a cleric necklace locking you out of any dps /burst possible.

You can get the Life Steal per hit and the increase 50% effective alone at 15 points. Both the 50% and the Syphon on Crit can be obtained at Tier 1 traits, whichever you prefer more.
Though I have to say going down one tree and doing an all or nothing tends to be the case for most classes, for builds.
The Thief Signet of Malice is a self heal skill, not a utility. They will be sacrificing Shadow Refuge, a potential stealth for it as well as any effective self heal as the activation heal is rather poor.
While most of these are down the blood magic tree, half of them are not required to be level 30 to achieve and are still able to stack them quite effectively. I just don’t think that syphoning should be so easily powered through 1 or 2 traits, especially when Necros already have the potential to increase that almost tenfold through many more traits to add if they like.
If they were to increase the amount that is healed, they would have to remove some of those traits to prevent insane stacking. Especially the 50% effectiveness increase.

I think the fair comparison would be SoM to our Blood Fiend.

SoM is far superior