Guild Wars 2

i was incredibly excited when i heard about this skill, but once it was added to the game my excitement turned to embarrassment, embarrassment that i spent 25 skill points on such a horrendously impractical “heal”.

the passive
as a passive it works like an under performing healing signet that only ticks when you’re taking damage.
surely with that harsh limitation you’d expect it to heal more than healing signet,
which ticks constantly forever but alas, healing signet heals more each tick.

active effect ICD’s
the issue with the active effect lies in the internal cooldown that ultimately kills this skill for the necromancer, you will only get 4 stacks of your 25 stack effect, giving you an utterly unnoticeable amount of healing.

proposed change to active
initial heal similar to the other heals, around 5k.
total change to active effect:-
Enhanced Bloodthirst: for the next 10 seconds all life siphoning is increased by X%
(perhaps 50%?) bare in mind that syphons are usually extremely small numbers.

proposed change to passive
one idea is to simply buff the healing so it atleast ticks for more than healing signet.
another is to change it entirely:-
Blood Drinker: siphon health with each hit.
(this would be a small amount, but without any annoying ICDs! so by stacking multiple wells and locust swarm you could actually see some decent healing from this)

anyone have any other ideas of how we could make the signet useful?

Yes, actually I do..

ArenaNet would rather add more skills/traits than fix old ones. They need to just go back to the original design they announced and see how that plays out. Maybe someday they will actually allow a vampire build, but considering the “buff” our siphon skills got it won’t be in the next year.

If the data mined leak on reddit is to be believed, Signet of Vampirism will be changed to siphon with each hit the necro takes.

Remains to be seen if it’s a straight 1-to-1 siphon or one in which the damage portion and the healing portion are separate from one another (assuming it’s even legit).

I was thinking that the ICD should be removed, and should heal a of damage taken, so for example, 50 of damage received on EVERY hit you take. Now, this makes us stupidly tanky, but unable to heal since to balance, the active would be STUPIDLY low. So why not just scrap the active heal. Instead, make the signet active while in Death Shroud? This would heal your actual health bar, so the more they hit you to get you out of death shroud, the more try screw themselves over. However, if they don’t, you get to wail on them. With the new GM trait, healing in death shroud will now exist (something that made me very happy) and this idea is kind of redundant, but I thought I should share

Best Wishes,
Oscuro of Kaineng

The easiest way for them to fix this skill is to simply remove the icd on both the passive and active. Then give us another signet trait after they merge half the crap weapon traits we have. Some of these would require too much time to implement.

I said it before – simpliest way to make signet useful is to allow it to work and heal in Death Shroud.

The problem like all siphons is that if you make it good standing on its own, it is overpowered when combined with the other siphons. It isn’t bad now, it is just niche, and far worse than CC in most cases. I still use it now and again, and just pray I don’t run into another condition necro.

ICD on passive is required, there are situations it would be grossly overpowered if it wasn’t there. ICD on the active is stupid, and should go.

The passive should be a siphon, not a heal.

If those things were done it would be good, but still not great. If it worked in DS, it would be great.

I still believe SoV was designed for party support: It shares siphons with allies and may even bypass boons to get them. The idea is sound but the implementation needs refining. figuring out who, between the caster and allies, need the siphon is a huge problem.

Ideally, siphon amount would be tied to percent of health missing on every ally to give strong siphons to those low on health, less to those with good health, and not proc at all for those with high health, saving the siphon for those who need it and meet ICD requirements. The stack could just time out if unneeded.

Saw this thread a while back, was meaning to comment sooner. Here’s my take on how SoV should be reworked:

No party support/ group effect— we hardly bring any group support to the table now, why start?

Rework signet as follows:

Passive: Siphon health each time you are hit (this effect cannot trigger any more than 5 times every 5 seconds)

Active: Heal yourself, and siphon additional health each time you strike.

Passive damage: 175 (scales slightly with power)
Passive healing: 325 (scales with healing power)

Initial self-heal: 3,690
Active damage: 225 (scales with power)
Active healing: 392 (scales with healing power)

Active duration: 5 seconds
Activation time: 1-1/4 seconds
Recharge time: 45 seconds

The “passive cooldown” is a throwback to a necromancer nerf ANet tossed out years ago in GW1, where Soul Reaping was given a 5 second ICD. After a ton of outrage from the necro community, it was changed to occur no more than 3 times every 15 seconds, effectively keeping the ICD but allowing greater utility.