Guild Wars 2

I’m wondering if we are looking at Vamp Sig wrong, and it was really an attempt to give Necros a unique Necro-specific form of attrition?

i.e. instead of giving us a boring -5% damage talent, or a +100 toughness talent, or gives protection on x thing happening talent, Anet tried to give us a unique way of reducing incoming damage.

Obviously it didn’t work out very well. But I do think the idea was good.

Imagine if the passive never went on cooldown after the active was used, and the active heal had a base of 7k?

Now would you use Vamp Sig? Passive damage reduction that doesn’t go away, and a good active heal?

What if the passive was better and provided true damage reduction? Like a % of each hit so it scaled with big hits (I almost never get hit with lots of little hits).

Tbh, the could fix the signet by simply changing it from damage taken to dealing damage siphons health. Combine that with fixing the amount of blood siphoning in the blood tree it would be decent. But I doubt they will fix either.

A passive damage reduction is nice but doesn’t fit with the necromancer theme since we should use death shroud instead.

Just change the signet to damage dealing and increase the amount siphoned = fine. At least imo.

I guess the reason I made this (as opposed to all the other vamp sig threads) was not to talk about making Vampsig an ‘on hit’ skill (which I would love too), but to talk about how to make the ‘when getting hit’ passive work.

The more I think about it, the more I suspect Anet never wanted the passive to be a proper heal like an ‘on hit’ skill would be, but more to provide passive damage mitigation.

However, the current passive has a lot of problems:

- if you are triggering the passive, (i.e. getting hit) you will probably need to hit the active to heal. This puts the passive on cooldown and makes it useless as damage mitigation. When it comes off cooldown, you’ll probably need to pop it again – meaning the passive never really gets used. Making the passive work permanently could fix this.

- 300 life on hit isn’t good damage reduction vs big hits. Which in PvE and PvP constitutes most damage. For true attrition, we really need to heal a % of damage dealt to us.

- Since the passive is just damage reduction, and not a heal, the active probably needs a buff. I would suggest increasing the base heal.

They could fix it by just reverting to the data mined version.
No base healing for a high risk burst of health on active and a no ICD siphoning passive.
If the issue was the bloodthirst trait just remove it from the game and finally make life siphoning worthwhile.

The idea behind the skill was good. We know that from the datamined version. The implementation is what failed horrendously.

Just bring the passive back to the datamined version, but more balanced; considering that the datamined version would have siphoned 300 damage per hit (way OP). Base 100 damage, 200 healing, up to 100 additional scaling with healing power/power, no ICD, change the active to have a significantly reduced ICD or no ICD, but with more limitations via the stacks (apply stacks according to allies in the area, up to some max).

This skill should be sustained damage/damage reduction, to complement a highly aggressive build, with a high risk/reward active. It needs damage on the passive, and it needs a better active to be competitive with our other healing skills, and it needs those to not directly compete like it does now. The skill should be about damage first.

The simplest change would to do what Bhawb suggests and revert it back to the datamined version but with a few tweaks to the numbers.

I also want them to at least up the active heal so that it is on par or slightly better than our existing heals if they arent going to alter the passive. The reason being is that it requires more risk to get the extra’s than the other heals we have as you can’t exactly run around a corner and activate it and gain the benefit of the extra heals as you need a target and preferably one in hitting distance.

Ideally I would quite like the passive to have a on hit transfer x amount of conditions with an ICD on it or if you take x amount of damage activate aegis or protection. Something a little bit out of the norm that will try and fill a few holes at the same time. If your going to bring something new in then at least make sure its going to help improve the class and not be detrimental to it.

Ghostextechnica.3270:

I’m wondering if we are looking at Vamp Sig wrong, and it was really an attempt to give Necros a unique Necro-specific form of attrition?

i.e. instead of giving us a boring -5% damage talent, or a +100 toughness talent, or gives protection on x thing happening talent, Anet tried to give us a unique way of reducing incoming damage.

Obviously it didn’t work out very well. But I do think the idea was good.

Imagine if the passive never went on cooldown after the active was used, and the active heal had a base of 7k?

Now would you use Vamp Sig? Passive damage reduction that doesn’t go away, and a good active heal?

What if the passive was better and provided true damage reduction? Like a % of each hit so it scaled with big hits (I almost never get hit with lots of little hits).

Toughness doesn’t have icd so would be much better lol

I haven’t been able to play since the patch, but I’m assuming the passive doesn’t activate on condition damage, maybe it should.

This would provide potentially small hits for it to generate a stronger effect in certain circumstances.

It would fit the general theme of the class, focusing on conditions.

It would promote intelligent game play, by rewarding intentionally avoid applying conditions on people using vs.

It would provide more use for our corruption skills.

Ghostextechnica.3270:

I’m wondering if we are looking at Vamp Sig wrong, and it was really an attempt to give Necros a unique Necro-specific form of attrition?

i.e. instead of giving us a boring -5% damage talent, or a +100 toughness talent, or gives protection on x thing happening talent, Anet tried to give us a unique way of reducing incoming damage.

Obviously it didn’t work out very well. But I do think the idea was good.

Imagine if the passive never went on cooldown after the active was used, and the active heal had a base of 7k?

Now would you use Vamp Sig? Passive damage reduction that doesn’t go away, and a good active heal?

What if the passive was better and provided true damage reduction? Like a % of each hit so it scaled with big hits (I almost never get hit with lots of little hits).

I might consider the skill useful if it didn’t rob me of a real heal. If it were a Utility skill, I might think it would have some use in a build, but as a Healing skill it is a complete disaster and will never see my skill bar again.

If blood thirst is indeed the problem, buff necromancer siphoning base values to match the bonus blood thirst provided. Though I think blood thirst should still stick around as a trait that instead increased damage done while siphoning (more than now) and the signet of vampirism can have it’s siphoning damage nerfed to garbage.

Lifesteal is so borked, that anet should remove it from the game. If it can’t be balanced it should not exist. The closest they have come to working lifesteal is…. The new guardian heal. The one that players in the guardian forum hate.

They should just change the passive to lifesteal on hit with an icd. I feel like they wasted a signet on this skill. All signet heals on other classes have passives which sustain them (excluding guard). Why does the necro get a terrible passive and a really sub par active along with it.

spoj.9672:

They should just change the passive to lifesteal on hit with an icd. I feel like they wasted a signet on this skill. All signet heals on other classes have passives which sustain them (excluding guard). Why does the necro get a terrible passive and a really sub par active along with it.

The active is the real problem in my opinion. The passive is just okay… If it got a boost from bloodthirst, if it worked in DS, if it had a higher base value, if it provided SOME siphoning damage, it would be good.

The active just plain bites. Bad healing, bad siphoning, bad damage, long cooldown. If we had a trait for signet to persist after use, it would be much better, but we don’t.

See i feel that even though the active is as bad as it is. Its far better than the passive. It has the same cast time as consume so its basically a weaker heal with less of a dps loss. The passive does nothing. Considering it has an icd and its just a flat damage reduction you would think they would keep it slightly stronger by giving it the damage back. But even then it would be pathetic. What good is a signet heal with a useless passive. If they wanted damage reduction it should be the same as guardians signet of judgement passive. If i take a signet heal i expect to get atleast some kind of sustain out of the passive.

I wish the passive in the SIG gave us life force per hit and the active was a heal+regen and filled life force to full.

Best i can tell, the balance team considers DS a much stronger defensive tool than the community does. As such, they are wary of boosting our non-DS defensive abilities because it may turn necro into some kind of uber-bunker.

They could do a lot of good for the passive if they made it like the following:

Signet of Vampirism
Passive: Siphon 8% of direct damage dealt to you from the source of the damage.
Active: Unblockable. Initial Self Heal: 3,960 (0.5). Mark a target. When any allied player hits this target, they siphon 250 (0.1) life from it. Lasts 5 seconds.
30 second cooldown.
Range 1200.

Note that the life siphoned from the passive would be modified by healing power (life gained) and power (damage).

They could also turn it into a better attrition signet if they made it so we passively siphoned health when we dealt direct damage, which would be incredible and encourage us to stay in combat.

Signet of Vampirism
Passive: When you hit a target, you siphon 350 (0.15) life.
Active: Unblockable. Initial Self Heal: 3,960 (0.5). Mark a target. When any player hits this target, they siphon 250 (0.1) life from it. Lasts 5 seconds.
30 second cooldown.
Range 1200.

Removing the ICD on the passive siphon may be the only thing SOV needs. If the ICD is to remain, especially on any defensive aspects or abilities, then it shouldn’t work unless you are taking damage from more than 5 (AOE cap) different sources. We also need to visually see real numbers of the active at work with the healing players receive and the damage they do to the target. Right now, it’s just to difficult to see if what kind of a real impact the skill is having. If my guess is right, then the active side of the skill may be fine.