Guild Wars 2

It’s totally okay for a warrior, the profession with the highest base armor and health, to have a passive healing tick for around four hundred health and yet necromancer siphons, which require actively dealing damage to a target, are nowhere near that level of efficiency?

I can’t help but find it kind of upsetting that the powers that be so frivolously grant other classes ridiculous amount of sustain while we’ve been stuck with a broken tree since the very start. Isn’t it time proper buffs were given to blood so that it actually becomes a viable choice for a necromancer interested in more sustain?

It’s not a comparison worth making I’m sure since anet will probably try to find a way to nerf the healing signet once warriors get over the current round of nerfs coming their way. I don’t mind anet tweaking our siphoning slowly as long as they’re tweaking it.

Monoman.2068:

It’s not a comparison worth making I’m sure since anet will probably try to find a way to nerf the healing signet once warriors get over the current round of nerfs coming their way. I don’t mind anet tweaking our siphoning slowly as long as they’re tweaking it.

Slowly I could live with.

Glacially near-stagnant…not so much.

Fourteen months after launch and a non-minion life siphoning build traiting Bloodthirst + Vampiric siphons two – yes, you read that right – two extra health
per hit than it did prior to the October 15th, 2013 patch.

Assuming life siphoning weren’t rebuilt from the ground up to rely on a completely different set of mechanics, our current version of life siphoning needs to be stealing ~80 health per hit (traiting Bloodthirst + Vampiric) to bring it up to par with the healing and regen available to other classes.

At the rate of +2 additional life siphoning every 14 months in conjunction with the fact we currently steal 40 health per hit when equiping those two traits, it will only take another 280 months (23 1/2 years) for life siphoning builds to finally reach parity.

Let me just break out my highlighter pen here so I can mark that date on my calendar. Don’t want to miss that momentous occasion so I can clear my schedule to celebrate!

TL;DR

For those unfamiliar with my caustic sarcasm when it comes to the absolutely pathetic state of life siphoning in this game (made doubly worse by the fact that its predecessor got it right in so many ways), the above amounts to saying life siphoning doesn’t suck. As a matter of fact, it barely sucks at all. And that’s why it sucks.

They definitely need to increase the scaling with healing power on life siphons. We’re the attrition class kitten! We dont have mobility to avoid damage, we take it like a boss. DS regen can be so fickle at times, you have to trait into it to be reliable not to mention how fast it depletes, our siphon heals need to be increased, not by too much. Every 500 healing power is a 50 hp increase, not too broken at all.

I’d be satisfied if we got a healing sig like the thief’s Signet of Malice. If we could get siphon numbers comparable to what the warrior does for doing nothing, I’d be happy.

Firstly, different classes are different, so making a comparison like that somewhat pointless.

But if you want to make a direct comparison, you have to consider that Healing Sig is their Heal slot, and siphons are additional healing to our heal slot.

I would argue that Consume Conditions and Blood fiend are both superior heals to Healing signet… CC for obvious reasons and Blood fiend more as a direct comparison for numbers(even if it does die fairly easy, its still more healing overall).

What your argument really comes down to is that warriors are allowed more passive survival, which is true. However they give up their heal slot for it.

Necro actually has really good passive survival between high health and DS. What we lack and I feel we need a boost to is active defense(blocks, aegis, evades, immunes, invulnes, etc).

I think the Necro needs at least some access to vigor for PvE, and also at least one short duration invulnerable skill for PvE. In PvP I feel our survival is high enough since we have nice control options plus high passive defense.

I agree that siphons are crap right now, and I do enjoy the siphoning playstyle, it is one of my favorite builds to play in any game actually.

The Dev comment about Blood magic being “pretty good” really kitten ed me off. Clueless…

They might counter with how we can generate hundreds of HP in the form of death shroud.

Classes are different and you can’t really compare them so directly.

Stx.4857:

Firstly, different classes are different, so making a comparison like that somewhat pointless.

But if you want to make a direct comparison, you have to consider that Healing Sig is their Heal slot, and siphons are additional healing to our heal slot.

I would argue that Consume Conditions and Blood fiend are both superior heals to Healing signet… CC for obvious reasons and Blood fiend more as a direct comparison for numbers(even if it does die fairly easy, its still more healing overall)
What your argument really comes down to is that warriors are allowed more passive survival, which is true. However they give up their heal slot for it.

Necro actually has really good passive survival between high health and DS. What we lack and I feel we need a boost to is active defense(blocks, aegis, evades, immunes, invulnes, etc).

I think the Necro needs at least some access to vigor for PvE, and also at least one short duration invulnerable skill for PvE. In PvP I feel our survival is high enough since we have nice control options plus high passive defense.

Firstly, classes are, indeed, different but direct comparisons are not somewhat pointless. These are wholly-created and fully adjustable professions within a game and not elements from the periodic table. They can play however the devs choose and are therefore actionable. Secondly, character traits have wide commonality. That is, the professions share more game play elements than they are in possession of unique ones so they are comparable. Lastly, seeing how these traits play out in one class against competition gives direct insight as to their potential benefits/weaknesses when applied to others. This provides access to copious amounts of observable data. Thus, not only is this exercise not pointless, one would be somewhat remiss not to.

Next, I thought it was obvious from the context of the comment (citing the thief and the warrior) that putting heavy regen abilities into a healing slot was a given. Granted, I exaggerated: giving necros warrior-regen numbers is ridiculous when taking DS which converts certain attacks to “health” into account. That being said, as it is, siphon is hardly adequate in its present state.

I also failed to mention that this wasn’t to say the necro shouldn’t continue to have access to multiple means of proc-ing siphon even after the addition of passive regen. Given that other classes like the guardian and elementalist have access to varied healing abilities, this wouldn’t be so outrageous.

As for whether Consume Conditions is superior to Healing Signet, well, given that the warrior has the same ability in Mending (necros heal per condition, warriors have 5 sec less CD) but they all run the signet should tell you something. Of course, the choice is made a no-brainer due to Cleansing Ire and Dogged March but that (in conjunction with with stun locking) is simply part of the horrifically overpowered warrior synergy. Given that there are many other ways for the necro to manage conditions, ClCo seems like overkill. I’d much rather have the option to choose copious health regen/siphon. Not only does it promote build diversity in choosing slots/weapons to balance the loss of cleanse, it is especially needed considering we have no access to (and I totally agree with you here) focus fire mitigation.

Lastly, that you’d argue that Blood Fiend is better than the helaing signet… well, I dunno what to do with that.

Stx.4857:

Firstly, different classes are different, so making a comparison like that somewhat pointless.

But if you want to make a direct comparison, you have to consider that Healing Sig is their Heal slot, and siphons are additional healing to our heal slot.

I would argue that Consume Conditions and Blood fiend are both superior heals to Healing signet… CC for obvious reasons and Blood fiend more as a direct comparison for numbers(even if it does die fairly easy, its still more healing overall).

What your argument really comes down to is that warriors are allowed more passive survival, which is true. However they give up their heal slot for it.

Necro actually has really good passive survival between high health and DS. What we lack and I feel we need a boost to is active defense(blocks, aegis, evades, immunes, invulnes, etc).

I think the Necro needs at least some access to vigor for PvE, and also at least one short duration invulnerable skill for PvE. In PvP I feel our survival is high enough since we have nice control options plus high passive defense.

You lost me when you said blood fiend was a superior heal to the warrior signet. I would gladly trade out my blood fiend for a healing signet.

Bloodfiend attacks about once every 3 seconds, that amounts to less healing than the warrior signet. And the only good thing about Consume Conditions is the cleanse, the healing it gives is actually pretty bad relative to the big hp pool of necros.

I agree that siphoning is garbage and lol@ blood fiend, but it seems off to compare siphon with someone’s healing skill that can’t burst heal or remove conditions.

Currently, siphon fails because

-Bad scaling with the class with such a high life pool
-You can’t heal in DS, our primary mode of survival.

Anyone can see how contradictory and useless siphon is considering the investment. I think blood magic really needs a rework.

ArchonWing.9480:

I agree that siphoning is garbage and lol@ blood fiend, but it seems off to compare siphon with someone’s healing skill that can’t burst heal or remove conditions.

Currently, siphon fails because

-Bad scaling with the class with such a high life pool
-You can’t heal in DS, our primary mode of survival.

Anyone can see how contradictory and useless siphon is considering the investment.

Exactly… You cannot compare the passive regen from a Healing slot to healing from traits.

All the balance issues aside, the simple answer is: Because Necromancers are a ranged class
So it does mean they don’t need as much Health, armor and regeneration as a Melee class. They event get to do more damage than you for the exact same reason, because they don’t have as much DPS up-time as ranged classes….

Just to emphasize, I’m giving the simple answer… I’m not denying how useless Health siphoning is for us, and how our regeneration abilities are crap to pretty much everyone else….

I agree that siphoning is garbage and lol@ blood fiend, but it seems off to compare siphon with someone’s healing skill that can’t burst heal or remove conditions.

Currently, siphon fails because

-Bad scaling with the class with such a high life pool
-You can’t heal in DS, our primary mode of survival.

Anyone can see how contradictory and useless siphon is considering the investment. I think blood magic really needs a rework.

You’re right that it’s wrong to compare, but how can you ignore the fact that a PASSIVE healing ability heals around the same as an active ability’s BURST, which is obviously available after some long cooldowns

SrebX.6498:

All the balance issues aside, the simple answer is: Because Necromancers are a ranged class
So it does mean they don’t need as much Health, armor and regeneration as a Melee class. They event get to do more damage than you for the exact same reason, because they don’t have as much DPS up-time as ranged classes….

Just to emphasize, I’m giving the simple answer… I’m not denying how useless Health siphoning is for us, and how our regeneration abilities are crap to pretty much everyone else….

I agree that siphoning is garbage and lol@ blood fiend, but it seems off to compare siphon with someone’s healing skill that can’t burst heal or remove conditions.

Currently, siphon fails because

-Bad scaling with the class with such a high life pool
-You can’t heal in DS, our primary mode of survival.

Anyone can see how contradictory and useless siphon is considering the investment. I think blood magic really needs a rework.

You’re right that it’s wrong to compare, but how can you ignore the fact that a PASSIVE healing ability heals around the same as an active ability’s BURST, which is obviously available after some long cooldowns

Well, I haven’t played warriors beyond sometimes on a friend’s PC. (And yes I like to mock on how ezpz it is, but this isn’t about me). But my point was mainly on that comparison that siphons cannot be compared to a utility skill.

If you got spiked down to very low health all of a sudden and have to burn that heal, isn’t that heal in that very moment the worst one one could take compared to options? Recovering 10k health over the course of 20 seconds, isn’t the same as using a heal spell for 10k with a 25 second cooldown, unless the sustained damage is consistent.

My point is that while using other classes to serve as a frame of reference on what works or what is broken is fine, but too much of implying class favoritism doesn’t really help anyone listen to us. It’s just that every class forum is full of “well this class has…” that it’s just really hard to take it seriously and most likely just gets ignored like 90% of other rants in this forum. It’s better to explain why this fails within the context of Necromancers. Talking too much about another class’s overpowered skills will just lead to anet nerfing them, and most likely doing nothing about us. It’s not the first or last time that’s happened. This has happened to necromancers when everyone else was QQ’ing about them, and little was done to fix whatever was wrong with their class. One could look over at what Anet thinks will improve Guardians but anyone that’s played one for more than a few hours would see that’s just insanely detatched. Is that the same over here? Sadly, yes but that’s another rant.

Anyhow, truth is that points spent for siphoning are bad simply because you would have been better off anything else. That’s really just all needed to be said.

And one really has to establish context— this is obviously more of an issue fighting players than it is in pve.

In any case, I’m not really disagreeing with anything, but it’s just better if people would find a way to just keep “ANET Y U NO BALANCE” out of order. Of course, we are a ranged class and shouldn’t have as much survivability. This of course somewhat ignores the fact that our ranged options aren’t too good and with gap closers, stuns, and whatnot and stuff that this “advantage” becomes more and more minimal… this is something I don’t think the developers understand since they don’t seem to play the same game as us.

SrebX.6498:

All the balance issues aside, the simple answer is: Because Necromancers are a ranged class
So it does mean they don’t need as much Health, armor and regeneration as a Melee class. They event get to do more damage than you for the exact same reason, because they don’t have as much DPS up-time as ranged classes….

I disagree about that the necro is a ranged class. In GW2, every class have melee and ranged weapons and skills, so that you can play the way you prefer. Necros have the DS and the staff, true, but that doesn’t mean that we must use only them. As a matter of fact, I play my necro very melee-ish, using Dagger/Dagger as my main weapons.

Almost every necro agree that the necro-weapon that makes the most dps is the dagger (melee) or the axe (short range). So, I don’t believe that is correct to say that the necro is a ranged class.

Necromancer ranged DPS is pretty terrible.

Even Including all conditions, I suspect that Warrior longbow is better DPS than Staff Necomancer, and rifle better DPS than scepter necromancer.