Guild Wars 2

So for kittens and giggles I decided to play around with a siphony, attrition style build for WvW.

Here it is: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNArYWn0IStN2ZD+0A/NmAXom8JOCoPgA4ej8DmAA-TFyCABAcIAwb/hjfAAPcCA8U9nEVCmlyPKOCAAA-w

For those who didn’t click the link, it’s a condi build that takes parasitic contagion, signet of vampirism, and some siphon/healing traits in blood magic.

I actually enjoyed this build when I wasn’t fighting very bursty enemies. It was pretty fun to play this way. The attrition-ness was there; fights that were lasting a good while were manageable between the PC heals, regular regen, vampirism heals, siphons and DS heals.

The issue was that it was very difficult to deal with big bursts, whether from power or condi damage. The other is that these strong defensive utilities I took in this build have pretty long cooldowns.

While it worked as an experimental, not-so-serious WvW build, it is not competitive against serious roamers and I’m sure it wouldn’t work in PvP. This leads me to 2 thoughts: first, that they are close to making this a viable playstyle with the proper buffs. I think combining all these things together allows a necro to actually have some attrition and aggression based healing. The other thought though, is that all of this stuff is weak. It doesn’t work in DS and even outside of it. Signet of vampirism needs, at least, an improvement to the active, because its hardly worth casting except as a last resort. Bloodthirst should be removed as a trait and made standard. Parasitic contagion could use a buff, maybe to 7%. Healing through death shroud on some level needs to happen, even if at a reduced rate, at least for siphons, which, I think is smart because you could cast SoV, hop into DS and pop life transfer and actually heal up a decent amount. If most of these changes were made, that could be an attrition based condi necro that is actually competitive.

I would like to invite others to try it out to see what they think, and to try to come back with ways they think that buffs could bring about the playstyle as I would love to see it happen. And for the record I switched around a lot of the utilities as I played, but when I was approaching a fight I generally used what I listed in the build.

But it wasn’t a complete failure, it was even good in some circumstances. It just wasn’t something I would at all consider to bring to a duel or PvP.

Maybe useing Signet Mastery since u have 2 Signets in use would be a better choice then Retaliation. I also see NO Healing Power in any Trinkets or Armor to say boost Deadly Invigoration. And also idk if HEaling Power boost Parasitic Contagion any ?

I like these Siphon/Attrition tests tho… for me never found any that I ran with longer then half a day

The best way to deal with burst currently is combining.death shroud with spectral armor. You will get back around 1k life force each time you take damage.

Ravezaar.4951:

Maybe useing Signet Mastery since u have 2 Signets in use would be a better choice then Retaliation. I also see NO Healing Power in any Trinkets or Armor to say boost Deadly Invigoration. And also idk if HEaling Power boost Parasitic Contagion any ?

I like these Siphon/Attrition tests tho… for me never found any that I ran with longer then half a day

Healing Power would boost the SoV heals and Deathly Invigoration and the regen, but I honestly don’t know how it all compares to vitality. I think it would be worth playing with if I had more of that gear. But only condi damage boosts the Parasitic contagion, and the siphons are practically untouched by healing power.

If there were an armor that had condi damage as the main with toughness and healing power as secondary stats I would try that, but that combination only exists with healing power and toughness as the primary stat. If I sacrifice too much condi damage I may not kill anyone (plus it doesn’t help Parasitic Contagion having less condi damage).

While I still don’t think this build is super amazing, I’m still using it just because it’s fun to get in there and get heals back, and I want to find the limitations of all this stuff since Anet seems to want to make it work, and they are maybe a few buffs or a new elite away from having it happen.

Thor Rising.7850:

The best way to deal with burst currently is combining.death shroud with spectral armor. You will get back around 1k life force each time you take damage.

I know how to deal with burst, it’s actually recovering from it without a burst heal or reliable life force regen, being that it’s a condi build.