Guild Wars 2

In light of the recent changes, it’s become apparent how disconnected the devs are when addressing skill issues and class balance. Is there one player who is actually happy with the new signet? I have yet to see one and from what I was shown it’s pretty much worthless.

We won’t be hearing from the development team for a good while. They naturally assume that the meta needs time to settle before they make any changes. So for the next week (more likely, the next month with holiday time off) or so we’ll be the only class not to have received a healing skill and eles will be running around completely unchecked in pvp by condition users.

Merry Christmas.

I’m OK with the signet. Not sure if I’d say “happy,” but it’s been pretty functional, and I don’t regret buying and equipping it. SoV is a perfect match for my build, but I’m VERY fringe. But it could be better, and thus, more appealing for, well, “normal” players.

Keep in mind, I’m a primarily PvE player, and I’ve noticed that on the class boards, the only way I can make sense of what other people are talking about is to assume they’re looking at things from a PvP standpoint. My main is also an Ele (that had a 30 Fire, 0 Arcana build from the start), so Necro is just an alt I like tooling around with for fun, and I’ve had the most fun turning her into a support healer. In short, I think outside the box and have fun, but that doesn’t necessarily equate to actual effectiveness.

If the goal is to open up new opportunities for less used builds, I’m happy… but mission not a success because people would rather stick to what they know, and SoV isn’t appealing enough on its own to draw in anyone other than, well, folks like me.

The ICD is more annoying than I thought it would be, as it’s sometimes a struggle just to get 4 stacks off. I have managed to get 5 stacks off on rare occasions, but those required setting a siphoning well before using SoV. This makes it nearly impossible to get more than 20 stacks off in a normal party. It’s unfeasible to expect everyone to use an AoE so we can always make full use of an SoV spike.

There is NO reason to have an ICD when you have a stack limit. A stack limit makes sense. With no stack limit, a handful of SoVs could down a world boss in seconds. But the ICD? You already capped its potential. Even if a Necro manages to take off all 25 stacks by itself (possible by using multiple siphoning wells and rapid attacks), what’s the payoff? The damage it would do to one target wouldn’t be game-breaking, and while the healing would be significant (almost guaranteed to heal anyone to full unless they have a very high health pool and was close to death), why wouldn’t that be a just reward? Warrior and Guardian both have healing skills that can heal for a significant amount in the right circumstances.

I would actually be fine with an active 0.6s ICD. And remember, I’m probably the only person on this forum that likes SoV (or rather, I like the idea of SoV). It’s at least a reasonable window for a party of 5 to use up all stacks. Heck, I’d be okay with keeping the 1s ICD as long as pets and minions could also use up stacks. It’s the fact that using SoV to its full potential is unfeasible in the average party that confounds me.

The only possible reason I can see for having an active ICD is in the interest of fairness with group healing. With no ICD, an ally hitting the marked target with more rapid attacks will get a majority of the healing, while allies with slower attacks will get less. In short, it would create a unique scenario of “heal stealing” from those who might need it more. Which is why, again, I would suggest a shorter ICD of AT MOST0.6s.

The passive, again, I’m totally okay with. It’s on by far the lowest-recharge signet Necros have, and it’s still a more useful passive than Signet of Undeath. No problems with ICD there, but the healing should either scale more with healing power or be a siphon like it originally was.

People have already talked at great length about what they hate about this skill, but I think feedback from someone who actually kinda likes it would be more constructive than worthless comments like “don’t bring it or you die,” “I want a refund,” and “we didn’t get a heal.”

OtakuDFifty.2965:

I’m OK with the signet. Not sure if I’d say “happy,” but it’s been pretty functional, and I don’t regret buying and equipping it. SoV is a perfect match for my build, but I’m VERY fringe. But it could be better, and thus, more appealing for, well, “normal” players.

Keep in mind, I’m a primarily PvE player, and I’ve noticed that on the class boards, the only way I can make sense of what other people are talking about is to assume they’re looking at things from a PvP standpoint. My main is also an Ele (that had a 30 Fire, 0 Arcana build from the start), so Necro is just an alt I like tooling around with for fun, and I’ve had the most fun turning her into a support healer. In short, I think outside the box and have fun, but that doesn’t necessarily equate to actual effectiveness.

If the goal is to open up new opportunities for less used builds, I’m happy… but mission not a success because people would rather stick to what they know, and SoV isn’t appealing enough on its own to draw in anyone other than, well, folks like me.

The ICD is more annoying than I thought it would be, as it’s sometimes a struggle just to get 4 stacks off. I have managed to get 5 stacks off on rare occasions, but those required setting a siphoning well before using SoV. This makes it nearly impossible to get more than 20 stacks off in a normal party. It’s unfeasible to expect everyone to use an AoE so we can always make full use of an SoV spike.

There is NO reason to have an ICD when you have a stack limit. A stack limit makes sense. With no stack limit, a handful of SoVs could down a world boss in seconds. But the ICD? You already capped its potential. Even if a Necro manages to take off all 25 stacks by itself (possible by using multiple siphoning wells and rapid attacks), what’s the payoff? The damage it would do to one target wouldn’t be game-breaking, and while the healing would be significant (almost guaranteed to heal anyone to full unless they have a very high health pool and was close to death), why wouldn’t that be a just reward? Warrior and Guardian both have healing skills that can heal for a significant amount in the right circumstances.

I would actually be fine with an active 0.6s ICD. And remember, I’m probably the only person on this forum that likes SoV (or rather, I like the idea of SoV). It’s at least a reasonable window for a party of 5 to use up all stacks. Heck, I’d be okay with keeping the 1s ICD as long as pets and minions could also use up stacks. It’s the fact that using SoV to its full potential is unfeasible in the average party that confounds me.

The only possible reason I can see for having an active ICD is in the interest of fairness with group healing. With no ICD, an ally hitting the marked target with more rapid attacks will get a majority of the healing, while allies with slower attacks will get less. In short, it would create a unique scenario of “heal stealing” from those who might need it more. Which is why, again, I would suggest a shorter ICD of AT MOST0.6s.

The passive, again, I’m totally okay with. It’s on by far the lowest-recharge signet Necros have, and it’s still a more useful passive than Signet of Undeath. No problems with ICD there, but the healing should either scale more with healing power or be a siphon like it originally was.

People have already talked at great length about what they hate about this skill, but I think feedback from someone who actually kinda likes it would be more constructive than worthless comments like “don’t bring it or you die,” “I want a refund,” and “we didn’t get a heal.”

The problem with the signet is simple the numbers in its current state are not good enough, all other healing skills give you more numerical wise. They have to buff them and giving back the siphon on the passiv would make it more like a vampire skill (that shouldnt be a problem with the icd).

Dear Balance Team,

Can you fix blood magic / siphoning?

How hard does it have to be?

Maybe next patch you can give us an extra 3 hit points per siphon (golly-gosh!)… that will be a massive help when I’m being stunned and hit for 16K by Warrior’s eviscerate.

Only reason i can think of why the ICDs are in there are that ANet is still scared of what kind of monstrosity they may unleash if they allow the necro to have both effective siphon and effective LF generation.

Meaning that they expect the necro to be popping in and out of DS constantly, never really dipping into dangerous levels during fights.

This may have held true, if any kind of healing could affect the necro while in DS!

As long as that does not hold true, dipping into DS is a liability in low health situations unless you can time your healing skills perfectly (and outside of consume condis, our heals are HOTs rather than instants).

At the same time they give warrior a pop and forget heal skill that convert 100% of incoming damage into heals, no ICD or anything within LOS. Just walk into a brawl, pop the skill, and watch the health rise back up.

Its as if they are still balancing like it was release day…