Guild Wars 2

I see so many MMs run Bloodthirst, and honestly it annoys the hell out of me, and here is why: it is simply worse in every single way than Mark of Evasion.

And to support my claim, I have math! (gasp) I’ll do two sets of calculations, one with high power, to give Bloodthirst its best case for the damage side of things, and one with high healing power, to show the healing side of things.

Assumptions
All of these will be assuming a standard minion build of 4/0/6/4/0 using a full minion build of Blood Fiend, Bone Minions, Bone Fiend, Shadow Fiend, and Flesh Golem, because this is the “optimal” setup for proccing Vampiric Master, which then has a total proc speed of 3.167 procs per second. Also we will assume single target situations, since minions are only going to be hitting a single target with Vampiric Master, we will assume all things are proccing as best they can; minions never die and hit with perfect efficiency, Mark of Evasion is used exactly every 10 seconds. And finally we will assume that it is a heavy armor target we are hitting, since that is what the game uses for its tooltips (this only affects Mark of Evasion’s direct damage, all else is armor ignoring), and that any durations that go into a fraction of a second never get the “lucky” tick (so a 6.5s bleed will be counted as 6, even though it will often tick 7 times).

High Power – Soldier Amulet/Fighter Runes – 2409 Power 355 Healing Power 20% Condition Duration 30% Boon Duration
Reason this was used is for max power, which gives Bloodthirst the highest damage possible.

Mark of Evasion
192 Damage on cast = 19.2 DPS
2 Stacks 9s Bleeds = 765 damage = 76.5 DPS
6s Regeneration = 1047 healing = 104.7 HPS
Total = 95.7 DPS and 104.7 HPS

Bloodthirst
Vampiric = 35 damage per hit and 33 healing per hit, 43/40 with BT
Vampiric Master = 83 damage per hit and 48 healing per hit, 99/58 with BT
BT = 50.67 DPS and 31.67 HPS from VM

MoE gives 47 DPS and 73 HPS higher than BT’s addition to VM, which means that for them to be equal in DPS you have to proc Vampiric 5.88 times per second, and to equal HPS you have to proc 10.43 times per second.

High Healing Power – Cleric Amulet/Flock Runes – 1945 Power 1420 Healing Power 20% Condition Duration 30% Boon Duration
Did this for highest healing power without getting any boon/regeneration duration which would have boosted MoE.

Mark of Evasion
155 Damage on cast = 15.5 DPS
2 Stacks 9s Bleeds = 765 damage = 76.5 DPS
6s Regeneration = 1845 healing = 184.5 HPS
Total = 92 DPS and 184.5 HPS

Bloodthirst
Vampiric = 34 damage per hit and 38 healing per hit, 42/47 with BT
Vampiric Master = 74 damage per hit and 67 healing per hit, 89/80 with BT
BT = 47.51 DPS and 41.17 HPS from VM

MoE gives 44.49 DPS and 143.33 HPS higher than BT’s addition to VM, which means that for them to be equal in DPS you have to proc Vampiric 5.56 times per second, and to equal HPS you have to proc 4.57 times per second.

Conclusion
Even in situations doing everything we can to maximize BT’s strengths and minimize MoE’s, we still come up with BT being about 2-3 procs per second of Vampiric short of equaling MoE. If we assume builds that would actually work in practice – no Blood Fiend, Flesh Wurm subbed in, minions dying and not attacking perfectly on CD – BT falls even further behind, not including the fact that MoE can both heal and damage multiple targets. Just by math alone, there is never a reason you should use BT in a minion build, period.

Thanks for reading, let me know if my math was correct, I’m riding a sugar/caffeine high so there might have been some mix ups (I once accidentally took numbers for VM while I had might active >.<). All numbers were taken from actual in-game practice, not tooltips, which are still (holy crap ANet) bugged in game, albeit only slightly so. And also, discussion is always welcome.

So dont run either, and run transfusion to heal party mates/or minions.

MoE is useless if the enemy never steps on it btw. just gonna point that out, assume max dps, means enemy is being beat and aggroed to minions most likely. so unless you dodge into a wall, it wont even proc.(unlikely, but something to note) I used to run MoE on a staff build for well, moe marks, and it just didnt work out for me. Transfusion atleast gives you burst healing potential. Which is good for minions~

Transfusion is better yes, but the point of this was to show that BT is literally mathematically worse to MoE in every single way so it should never be run, while Mark of Evasion at least has some small niche.

Its not particularly hard to land MoE, you just dodge onto the enemy, just like casting a mark directly on top of someone.

Bloodthirst can also be applied for Dagger’s second skill, which may ot may not be useful for Dagger minionmasters. Signet of Vampirism too, is affected by Bloodthirst but I don’t think it would matter much.

Actually that’s a really good point I forgot about. Although it only adds about 270 healing to the skill (no damage :/), which goes down to around 13 HP/s increase. Not enough to make it worthwhile still, but it definitely gets things much closer when looking at the second case.

On a second thought, the entire heal that comes from Mark of Evasion is from Rejuvenation. In optimal cases, as you calculated an shown, the trait should be better than Bloodthirst; however, with few boons at our disposal that Rejuvenation is subject to be removed easily by any boon removal skill or worse – be corrupted.

The heal from Mark of Evasion is also subject to mitigation by Poison, but I don’t know if Vampiric traits are also affected. Since the damage component of the siphons are not mitigated by armor or Protection nor buffed by damage percentile traits such as Close to Death, I wouldn’t be much surprised if the heal component ignored Poison.

Edit: If the Necro chooses to use Focus and/or Staff in his build and is good at landing Staff 2 and/or Focus 4 – combined with the generic 6 points in Death Magic (therefore %30 boon duration) and Full of Life or even without – he may have permanent Rejuvenation already.

More often then not, when I feel like I NEED to be healed, the last thing that ever comes to mind would be to role into the enemy to pop a mark. When I could just as easily use Dagger 2, then staff 2 then get far away and the minions tank and heal.

Now I will admit, I am not too great at reading math, but I did my best. I’m not to sure if you took into consideration that the minions will pop about 7 heals if they all attack once. If I’m reading your numbers right after they all attack that’s an extra 693 damage and 406 healing. You can also take into consideration, when that Golem charges every time someone takes damage from you get a heal wich can end up burst healing.

(You gotta keep in mind, I’m no good at math and this is my simple man’s way of reading and replying to you, I can be completely wrong )

On paper MoE is better damage and healing, but is the risk if getting your heal worth it? When you can just as easily amp up your minion healing and be safer
Risk vs Reward and all that. Plus Marks don’t work on world bosses and walls.

I hope my “stupid” didn’t rear it’s ugly head too much in this post, if it did please correct me, I take it as a way to learn

@Bhawb: the math looks legit.

Ever since the nerf from 50%, Bloodthirst has been pointless. If Vampiric Master’s siphons scaled off power & healing power, it’d be a different story (but that would require minion damage scaling with power as well).

Imo, it just needs to be reworked completely. Either revert back to a higher % of efficiency, have it increase bleeding damage, have bleeds heal per tick, or cause regen when applying bleed.

MoE has some nifty uses in spvp, and I didn’t realize it until I started running a 6/0/0/2/6 D/D / staff power build. While not a end-all, be-all, it’s a reliable method of gaining regen, and adding a little bit of pressure. It, like pretty much all necromancer skills, is all about resourcefulness.

There is alot of If’s and But’s to both side of the coin, yes if you have regen on you then you risk it getting corrupted the same way if you’re using standard attacks for siphon and get stunned/interrupted then you lose out on healing also.

So there is a positive and negative to both sides and for me if it was a choice between bloodthirst or mark of evasion then I would select MOE as I just don’t see the boost given with bloodthirst making that much of a difference. But to be honest when I run a MM build I normally select neither of them because I prefer Transfusion its just too good at keeping your critters alive to pass it up.

Pregnantman.8259:

~snip~
The heal from Mark of Evasion is also subject to mitigation by Poison, but I don’t know if Vampiric traits are also affected. Since the damage component of the siphons are not mitigated by armor or Protection nor buffed by damage percentile traits such as Close to Death, I wouldn’t be much surprised if the heal component ignored Poison.
~snip~

Just a quick note, all siphoning is effected by poison. I was really surprised when I first saw this actually and for exactly the reasoning in your post. Siphon damage bypasses armor, therefore siphon heals should bypass poison. Really seems logical that siphon heals would not be effected by poison, but alas it is.

Sors Immani.8429:

Imo, it just needs to be reworked completely. Either revert back to a higher % of efficiency, have it increase bleeding damage, have bleeds heal per tick, or cause regen when applying bleed.

IMHO roll it into one of the dagger traits. I want to say combine Dagger Mastery and Bloodthirst to create

Bloodthirst:
Lifedrain +20%
Dagger CDs -20%

Now it’s like Radiant Fire. It’s very meaty if you’re using the appropriate weapon set, but even if you’re not, you still get a dollop of something out of it.

Pregnantman.8259:

The heal from Mark of Evasion is also subject to mitigation by Poison, but I don’t know if Vampiric traits are also affected. Since the damage component of the siphons are not mitigated by armor or Protection nor buffed by damage percentile traits such as Close to Death, I wouldn’t be much surprised if the heal component ignored Poison.

It is mitigated, all healing is.

Pregnantman.8259:

Edit: If the Necro chooses to use Focus and/or Staff in his build and is good at landing Staff 2 and/or Focus 4 – combined with the generic 6 points in Death Magic (therefore %30 boon duration) and Full of Life or even without – he may have permanent Rejuvenation already.

True, but then you should just pick up Transfusion :P

Jake.1430:

More often then not, when I feel like I NEED to be healed, the last thing that ever comes to mind would be to role into the enemy to pop a mark. When I could just as easily use Dagger 2, then staff 2 then get far away and the minions tank and heal.

The point of both traits is having a lot of small heals, the burst healing really doesn’t factor much for either (that’s where Dagger 2 and your heal skill come in). I’m generally assuming you’re in PvP, in which case you have to be near melee range all the time anyway because of the capture point and minions don’t particularly tank for you.

Jake.1430:

Now I will admit, I am not too great at reading math, but I did my best. I’m not to sure if you took into consideration that the minions will pop about 7 heals if they all attack once. If I’m reading your numbers right after they all attack that’s an extra 693 damage and 406 healing. You can also take into consideration, when that Golem charges every time someone takes damage from you get a heal wich can end up burst healing.

Essentially I took every minion’s attack speed, and took that into consideration. So whether they heal in one big burst, or they all hit here and there, it doesn’t change the healing per second you get over a longer period of time. I also didn’t include Charge because there are all kinds of different cases to consider, like what if he misses completely (you just lost HP/s because he wasn’t AAing for a few seconds), or what if he gets them in a corner and hits for massive healing/damage? It was just too many variables.

Jake.1430:

On paper MoE is better damage and healing, but is the risk if getting your heal worth it? When you can just as easily amp up your minion healing and be safer
Risk vs Reward and all that. Plus Marks don’t work on world bosses and walls.

I hope my “stupid” didn’t rear it’s ugly head too much in this post, if it did please correct me, I take it as a way to learn

I should have put in PvP only as my consideration :P All the math was done with the PvP version of MoE, although in PvE you can just use the side of the mark to proc it, and your minions should still tank for you, and in PvP you have to be close anyway.

Sors Immani.8429:

@Bhawb: the math looks legit.

Ever since the nerf from 50%, Bloodthirst has been pointless. If Vampiric Master’s siphons scaled off power & healing power, it’d be a different story (but that would require minion damage scaling with power as well).

Imo, it just needs to be reworked completely. Either revert back to a higher % of efficiency, have it increase bleeding damage, have bleeds heal per tick, or cause regen when applying bleed.

Agreed. Bloodthirst just doesn’t have much of a good niche anymore, mainly because of this. Also, VM does scale, all vampiric siphons scale now, and VM’s actually scale the best, its just that BT’s addition isn’t all that great.

Scarran.9845:

So there is a positive and negative to both sides and for me if it was a choice between bloodthirst or mark of evasion then I would select MOE as I just don’t see the boost given with bloodthirst making that much of a difference. But to be honest when I run a MM build I normally select neither of them because I prefer Transfusion its just too good at keeping your critters alive to pass it up.

Transfusion is best by far yes.

Bhawb.7408:

Agreed. Bloodthirst just doesn’t have much of a good niche anymore, mainly because of this. Also, VM does scale, all vampiric siphons scale now, and VM’s actually scale the best, its just that BT’s addition isn’t all that great.

Really? I recall hearing something about healing power scaling for the healing aspect of VM, but didn’t realize that the damage aspect of the siphon scales with power.

Shows how long its been since I’ve ran minions :P

Ya, you can see it in the calculations, higher power = higher damage. The healing power thing was that for a while the trait was bugged, and wasn’t granting any healing power scaling at all, so they slightly nerfed its base values but allowed it to function as intended (gee thanks).

Transfusion is the best option there, it can provide a nice AoE heal for all of your minions or everyone around you – except you. I wouldn’t think twice about choosing Transfusion but the benefit of the trait is entirely different. Transfusion is purely for the support of others while Bloodthirst and Mark of Evasion can provide some sustain to player himself.

Without any sources of Regeneration, Mark of Evasion seems the better choice – it doesn’t only heal you but heals your melee minions that need the heal to an even greater extent than Bloodthirst does. But the better heal is not truly brought by the trait; it actually comes from Regen. So with other sources (Focus, Staff) you already have the opportunity to have you and your minions have Regen for almost all times. Additionally, you don’t have to dodge towards your enemy and risk danger to do so. While Bloodthirst is totally passive, stacks with Regen and it can not have its effect cleansed or corrupted. Its not the best heal or might be the worst one in the adept major traits, but if I was given the option to choose between MoE and Bloodthirst with any weapon/rune set, I would choose Bloodthirst. In real game, I would choose neither but I like debating

Runes of the fighter?

They are no more!

This whole thread is lies! THE END IS NIGH!

Actually pregnant Transfusion is still the better option for the player itself. If used correctly you can turn it into a huge self heal.