Guild Wars 2

when you take a look at other classes in guild wars 2 you will see plenty of other classes that have access to proper healing over time that helps them sustain themselves through just about any fight . but when it comes down to necromancers healing i get the feeling that arena net devs are scared out of their mind of tweeking necros healing factors just the tiny bit out of fear of making necros over powered .
so what is in your opinion what % should be for a necro in their over all healing factor , do you feel that necros need to be buffed or nerfed ?

All normal heals average at about 300 hp/s .

For necros, thats basically it. The regen is conditional and doesnt work in DS. And DS itself is therefore only a “longer invul” state, where you hope it lasts till your 25s heal comes up again…. and no interrupt ofc

All other “sustain demigods” usualy get:
+100 hps perma regen
+100 hps traited special regen (adrenal hp, backpack regen, water effect)
+ another small “burst heal” 100-200 hps (water 15, water dodge, elixir heal field, guard staff)

= they have 500+ hps, basically another heal.

Meanwhile, the necro gets a nerf to well of blood….

Life Siphoning needs to be buffed – buffed to where it’s “meh” in 1v1 but scales to be better with more opponents (5 maximum) to the point where it actually helps you survive focus fire like blocks, invulns, evades, etc. do.

The general game balance is actually pretty good but there are some bad traits for every class that need updating as well as animations. An example for something that needs better animation is Point Blank Shot from the ranger. An example of another trait line that sucks… well… Guardian Zeal traitline – might even be worse than Blood Magic.

One trait that’s very similar to the problems that we have is: Zealous Blade - Attacks with your greatsword deal an extra 5% damage and heal you.

Terrible healing scaling. In any build that I ever wanted to use it there was always a better reason to just put points into something else for damage which also, overall, gives me more healing/health in the end.

Remember healing and siphons are different. Siphons damage while healing so the effective gap between yourself and opponents is double.

Anchoku.8142:

Remember healing and siphons are different. Siphons damage while healing so the effective gap between yourself and opponents is double.

Its a double edge sword, working mostly against you.

Its easier to press a autoheal button and get guaranteed 100hp while in safe spot.

Siphon needs to hit some1 to get +50/-50 hp , for it to be actualy viable ( PVP only ofc, cz healing in PVE … )
it would need to be like +75/-75 hp .

But Arenanet favors passive warrior baddies and is scared of necro so the reality is closer to +25/-25 hp

Why do siphons need to even do damage? Armor ignoring damage is quite good/useful sure but it is negligible and we already have condition damage for that

I believe this holds siphons back – just give me bigger heals and no damage

The issue with Necro and regen is that we are the only profession that can “turn off” our own healing. When any other profession has say 500 HPS average, they actually average that HPS regardless of other . A Warrior with Healing Signet cannot lose that passive HP regen through any action except by activating it. They can block all day, they can activate every immunity possible, etc. but as long as they never use the heal they will always be healed. Same for Rangers and their passive healing, same for Elementalist and their healing, not a single other profession can turn off their healing by using other defensive abilities.

As long as we can turn our defense off, or have stupid crap like trying to pass off condition regen as a grandmaster trait.

Also siphons deal damage because that is what a siphon is. If you siphon gas from someone, it doesn’t magically generate gas for you, you take gas from them and give it to you. It is the very definition of what siphoning is, and its based on the entire Necromancer theme of stealing strength from others.

Siphons always requires you to hit something. Theres the first catch: we cant ensure that. We dont have access to stability so if we get stunlocked or even dazed we dont only suffer that damage and CC, we also loose the potential healing. Warriors or engineers dont have to rely on hitting the enemy to get this effect, they can block and still get their benefit. Its also the same for the ele healing signet, while using a blink or rtl to get out of sticky situations they also get their effect, even if they simply run away they can spam #1 into nothing and dont loose their healing.

DS naturally screws over this entire concept. I guess i dont need much explanation here.

Our siphon concepts are mostly based on a “per hit” basis. This indicates that their strenght is always between 100 and 500% Its rather hard to balance, a staff mark heals you for very little if you hit one target, its actually really decent if you hit 5. Best example is locust swarm, against a single target that kites you it does not help much, but if you are in the middle of an enemy team, hitting 5 people with all hits its the jackpot for pure hp/s measured on investment for siphon skills.

Weaponskills by themself strongly differ, scepter for example will never achieve many hits per second.

So the best solution in the current state would be a ICD for the siphons, but a vastly improved effect. This could be tweaked to “keep” the rewarding feeling to keep hitting enemys in quick sucession, lets say vampiric has kitten ICD, that gets reduced by 0,3 s per hit. It would require a change on DS, as well as the trait values, as well as a re-arrangement to the trait locations to fix it from the ground up. Synergy like siphon a bigger amount of life when you remove or corrupt a boon, or on condition application, or on any other aspect of the “atrittion” concept would be really neat.

Siphons are weak because they are all balanced around the ideal scenario where you are hitting 5 targets constantly, and they don’t work with the professions mechanic. Necros are the only class with numerous traits that encourage them to not use their professions mechanic. Siphons are one example, but so are all the on enter/exit traits. All the traits basically say, if you want to get maximum efficiency out of this trait you better not be in DS at all.

They could fix this for siphons by simply making them work in DS. This would go a long way to making siphon traits balanced and viable. The idea of an ICD on siphons is also really dumb. This is because necros sustain doesn’t scale with the number of enemies. DS mitigates the same amount of damage when fighting 1 or 5 enemies. This could easily be fixed by making siphons (including parasitic contagion) stronger because those skills do scale with number of enemies. The reason Anet probably doesn’t want to do this is because it is the antithesis of how other classes work. For instance, a warriors healing is the same against 1 and 5 enemies. What changes is that their damage mitigation is much better because invulns, and dodges scale with enemies. Necros lack access to all the things that lead to increased survivability in a team fight, so need to make that up somehow. That somehow is with siphons.

Brujeria.7536:

So the best solution in the current state would be a ICD for the siphons, but a vastly improved effect.

I would argue that that’s the worst solution. Siphons cannot not be volatile. They have swings in effectiveness by their very nature, and an ICD doesn’t change that fact, only caps it. Instead of trying to fight the inherent volatility by adding an ICD, it should be embraced by actually letting it be awesome in those situations where it would be awesome.

Because you cannot siphon from someone you don’t hit, siphons can be negated. They can also explode in effectiveness with no ICD. All that adding an ICD would accomplish is preventing the explosion, so they are still volatile, but only in a downward direction. For a sustain mechanic, this is very bad.

Now, why it would be all right for siphons to scale with hits landed is because currently, a necro has no active defenses that scale with numbers of opponents. Spectral Armor is great against one, but the second, third, or fourth attackers see no difference between Spectral Armor and Protection (to be clear, I don’t want Spectral Armor changed, it’s great as is). Since we can’t really defend against multiple foes, we need instead to sustain against multiple foes. The way siphons already function is actually perfect for this, just the values need work (and interaction with death shroud). You can’t siphon from foes that aren’t there, so siphons won’t become OP for one opponent, but at the same time, they help sustain against multiple foes when multiple foes are actually there.

Now, if you were to try and improve siphons to an amount relevant to multi-foe sustain with an ICD, they would become a brick wall for a single attacker.

TLDR: Siphons are not comparable to other healing, both due to the “must hit” nature of siphons and the profession’s limitations.

You know, siphons for mobs in Orr are really freaking powerful compared to Necromancer’s. It is very humbling to watch my vaunted health pool get sucked away by some mob because I cannot spike it down fast enough using anything but dagger.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Brujeria.7536:

So the best solution in the current state would be a ICD for the siphons, but a vastly improved effect.

I would argue that that’s the worst solution. Siphons cannot not be volatile. They have swings in effectiveness by their very nature, and an ICD doesn’t change that fact, only caps it. Instead of trying to fight the inherent volatility by adding an ICD, it should be embraced by actually letting it be awesome in those situations where it would be awesome.

Because you cannot siphon from someone you don’t hit, siphons can be negated. They can also explode in effectiveness with no ICD. All that adding an ICD would accomplish is preventing the explosion, so they are still volatile, but only in a downward direction. For a sustain mechanic, this is very bad.

Now, why it would be all right for siphons to scale with hits landed is because currently, a necro has no active defenses that scale with numbers of opponents. Spectral Armor is great against one, but the second, third, or fourth attackers see no difference between Spectral Armor and Protection (to be clear, I don’t want Spectral Armor changed, it’s great as is). Since we can’t really defend against multiple foes, we need instead to sustain against multiple foes. The way siphons already function is actually perfect for this, just the values need work (and interaction with death shroud). You can’t siphon from foes that aren’t there, so siphons won’t become OP for one opponent, but at the same time, they help sustain against multiple foes when multiple foes are actually there.

Now, if you were to try and improve siphons to an amount relevant to multi-foe sustain with an ICD, they would become a brick wall for a single attacker.

TLDR: Siphons are not comparable to other healing, both due to the “must hit” nature of siphons and the profession’s limitations.

I have to agree with the reasoning for multiple foes compared to a single foe regarding cooldown. A static ICD would be harmfull indeed, however a combination of a ICD that gets reduced by x for every hit you cause (a flexible ICD) would stay true to the volatility, more hits reward you with bigger effects, not instantly as it is right now, but by reducing the effective ICD against multiple foes to a fraction.

The bottom line is not to limit the “feel great” moment inherit to the volatility nature, when you can aggressively hit and pressure foes, but rather meant to help in those situations where you just can’t. Adding a little bit of reliability to the worst case scenario without limiting the the best case scenario.

For example, we are inherit weak against CC, stunlocks, multiple foes due to no easy access to stability. Now, if you are pressured by 2 or more foes, you most likely dont get much hits out due to stun, the need of evading aoes, dodging key skills, however, in certain situations you get a single AA or a tick of Locust swarm hits something, you then get at least the fixed amount to not be totally screwed over. The mentioned sustain against multiple foes is very good on paper and by design, however it are these moments when the siphons effect are the lowest, exactly the moment you would need to rely on them. The higher amount capped by a flexible ICD would at least help a little bit. Lets say its a 400 siphon with 5s ICD, you would get at least a 80 hp/s heal “reliable” sustain bottomline because one single hit every 5 seconds should be achieveable in every situation.

In the best case scenario, against multiple foes the peak moments wouldnt be harmed much either, lets assume the ICD gets reduced by 0,3 seconds per hit (hitting multiple foes with one skill would be like 3 foes * 0,3 second reduced ICD) would essentially lower the ICD to anywhere between 3 and 1 second, based on how well you do, much like it is now.

Of course the numbers are just placeholders, but we wont get much stability so our sustain mechanic would always fail in the situations we would need them the most. The intention would not be to limit it, neither to make it idiot proof like healing signet is, but to push the volatile nature into a more reliable fashion in our bad moments. The reward would be shifted from a small reward on a per hit basis to a more frequent potent effect.

As a lot of other people mentioned ICDs on siphons are very bad. EQ and WoW quite actively proved it, the hit requirement more than makes up for the damage.

Tho i do remember someone making a suggestion of limiting siphon potential to how much actual dps you can push out (so like stronger damage but average healing on soldier, high healing and “high”/150 on hit damage for nomads, weak/close to no/current damage with high healing on zerker). Or plain % based.

Basically, play with unholy sanctuary.

You will do lousy damage but nothing will kill you ever, because the game auto shrouds you. Then understand that anet thinks that this is what necromancer gameplay is like all of the time.

Siphons are for dirty damage not heals. The power coefficient is much nicer.
Siphon damage isn’t mitigated by armor or anything like a condition. It’s cheap and dirty raw damage.

Just because our manifesto said ‘Master of Attrition & Condi manipulation’ don’t expect us to play like that.

Bweaty.9187:

Siphons are for dirty damage not heals. The power coefficient is much nicer.
Siphon damage isn’t mitigated by armor or anything like a condition. It’s cheap and dirty raw damage.

Just because our manifesto said ‘Master of Attrition & Condi manipulation’ don’t expect us to play like that.

1000 min damage pre basic attack even on non-crit builds. 5% bonus in itself is 50 bonus damage, siphons each deal that amount if full traited for them. Are you truly suggesting that 6 trait points, your entire stats lineup and weapon set dedicated to get a damage boost you get from 3 trait points and a single sigil or a sigil and rune set is worth it?

Anubis – I don’t agree on any level. I’m just saying how it sadly is:

Base damage: 33
Power coefficient 0.2%

Base Heal: 31
Healing Power coefficient 0.004%

Also, the damage ignores mitigation, as tho it’s a condition instead of direct damage.
Being in DS means we get no heals at all from it.

My example of how a ‘heal on attack’ thing works, Ele’s Sig of Resto. (1 skill button no trait cost)

Base Heal: 202
Healing Power coefficient: 0.1%