Guild Wars 2

Since the chage to siphoning and the new haling skill came out has anyone made a viable vamp build? What armor/weaps/equipment did you use?

Well I use wells that siphon and sigils/runes that siphon but only for my WvW well tank build. I don’t think siphoning is all that effective right now and the new heal skill is not good at all.

The new heal skill is pretty worthless for a siphon build. Blood Fiend is the better choice there for actual siphons (the attack gets boosted by Bloodthirst).

What gametype?

Any game type would be fine.

Well I dont recommend life siphon builds for pve but if you really want to use it I came up with 20/25/0/25/0 for life siphon zerker build which doesnt lose too much damage. Its basically the build in my sig but instead of soul reaping you take blood magic with vampiric precision and well cooldowns. If you dont use wells for whatever reason you can take vampiric precision and bloodthirst.

In pvp the new heal is awesome on power builds because its the only heal in the game that actively does damage. Against players with a brain the minion is useless.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRBIhdG1JGRNbmth3G0boAmPwNUhejPcM1D3R/cA-TwAg0CtIMSZkzIjRSjsGN6YBy+j5HA

Easy to get 10 hits in by yourself when heal is active, healing for 5k (tooltip on site is broken) and doing 2k damage by yourself. Basically another 2k health for you if you figure health he does not have is health you do. If you do manage to get the full tics off with a teammate thats 10.25k hp and 5k damage. Its massively awesome. Hell of a lot more effective then the warriors heal sig that gets destroyed by poison. If your enemy runs away when he sees the mark above his head, good, cripple his kitten and burst him down with the axe.

Few things wrong here

In pvp the new heal is awesome on power builds because its the only heal in the game that actively does damage. Against players with a brain the minion is useless.

Potentially true, but in practice, the signet is even easier to avoid its damage entirely than the minion. Avoiding being hit for 5 seconds is much easier than avoiding a hit every 3 seconds for an indefinite amount of time.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Easy to get 10 hits in by yourself when heal is active, healing for 5k (tooltip on site is broken) and doing 2k damage by yourself.

Easy to get 10 hits in, but with a 1 second ICD per attacker, at best you only get healed for 5 of those, assuming they are spread pretty evenly over those 5 seconds. So, your maximum healing is 506/hit with a maximum of 2,530 over five hits (and 5 seconds), plus base heal of 4,035. At best, this is a 6,565 heal assuming your opponent doesn’t try to avoid you hitting them when they are marked. In PvP: never going to happen. Note: numbers were calculated with the 150 healing power in the linked build.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Basically another 2k health for you if you figure health he does not have is health you do. If you do manage to get the full tics off with a teammate thats 10.25k hp and 5k damage.

You need a bare minimum of 4 teammates all hitting the target along with you (having already activated a pulsing damage) to possibly use all 25 stacks due to the 1 second ICD per attacker. If your entire team is pounding on one guy, he’s probably dead anyway, regardless of you using this signet or not.

Stand The Wall.6987:

Its massively awesome. Hell of a lot more effective then the warriors heal sig that gets destroyed by poison. If your enemy runs away when he sees the mark above his head, good, cripple his kitten and burst him down with the axe.

Why would the enemy run? One dodge roll when marked and nearly half of the potential healing is already gone.

Youre right I forgot the active effect has the internal cooldown. Unless that changes its effectiveness is pretty minimal.
For some reason Anet says they want necros to sustain themselves through siphoning but insofar there isnt really much out there for that purpose.

Yeah, if the skill didn’t have ICD’s, it would be decent. May still be weak, but it would be worth it in some builds/situations.

With the ICD’s, though, it’s just horrid.

In pvp is the heal signet is bad. A good player will avoid heal/damage for the duration. In pve it may have some uses but running a siphon build in pve?

I think the siphon heal in pve could work, provided you use it on a boss. Your team should put in enough hits to get the full effect.

Perhaps, but then the question is if you cause more damage by activating the signet or using that time to just attack normally.