Guild Wars 2

That’s a shame, but I rather expected it. I suppose it does still leave Siphon Life, though, as it actually says Healing per Pulse. But even with dagger mastery it’s on a 10 second cool down, so retaliation would be up and down every five seconds about.

Gain retaliation for 5 seconds when you heal.

First: Is this just for using the Healing skill or is it literally every single heal?
Secondly: is there any cool down on this Death Magic trait?

What brings this question up is the possible combination of Spiteful Vigor and Vampiric.

A concept Dagger/Dagger Power Build (which I’ll link below) has sprung to mind but I know almost nothing about the PVP half of this game. As most of the necromancer complaints seem to be about damage (or rather lack thereof) I wonder if it’s possible to simply leave the enemy in a no-win situation. Something that might not be quick, but nevertheless has a high chance of ending in the necromancer’s favor.

The scenario playing out in my mind is a necromancer rushing his target via the speed-enhancing traits and Locust Swarm, dropping wells one after the other, and quickly digging in with the daggers to begin healing. However, as it has been pointed out that the combined effort of all the vampiric traits amounts to little, the important part of this idea is to keep the Retaliation from Spiteful Vigor up permanently.

Dark Pact, Spectral Grasp, and Signet of Spite would be used to keep the target from being able to flee. One to stop, one to drag back kicking and screaming, and one to cut their movement enough that they can’t hope to retreat. Held in place I imagine they would fight back which would hopefully lead to an almost certain victory.

Each time I attack I heal. Each time they attack they hurt themselves. Or so the theory goes. Even if the above questions turn out to be unfavorable to the idea, perhaps there’s a way to salvage it? Or maybe some more experienced players can tell me why it’s best to abandon the concept now.

I hesitate to look at focusing on Staff because of how buggy everything seems to be regarding its traits but I imagine if this turns out to be futile I’ll have to fall back on the hopes of that and a condition build.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/en/?fQEQRBIRhG2IkW1elmxG/eCQ6Rz8i9kis1GSRv2C;TwAA1Ctoyxk

Or, because of the semicolon:
http://tinyurl.com/8c9b6nx

I ended up leaning towards a similar idea almost the same time I found this thread. Really it’s about exactly what I had in mind once I started looking at some of skills and what they do. I haven’t done much PVP yet in any fashion, it’s all been PVE for me, but the only real change I’m considering is Uncatchable over Thrill of the Crime. Maybe I’m just underestimating the combination of Might and Fury, but it seems like dropping the caltrops would serve not only as a good way to prevent chase, but also to help keep a target from being able to run around too much. Guess I’ll have to try both and see which I like more at some point.

Coming over from City of Heroes with their different trays of powers, I can’t get used to reaching for the 5 through 0 keys across the top. So I kind of borrowed the format and I have

Skills 1 though 5 = #1 though 5
Heal, Utility, Elite = Alt+1 through Alt+5

And then other then binding dodge to a thumb button the mouse, I haven’t made many other adjustments. Although I really need to find a new key for Steal if I ever plan on trying to use it regularly. Z seemed tempting, but I haven’t decided yet.

This bug you have stops movement in all directions?

Following one of my normal habits of heading straight for an enemy with C&D queued and intending to slip around behind for the back-stab right after the strike lands, my thief stops as soon as he goes into stealth and I can’t get him to glide past and behind the enemy. In regular combat I can brush beside and all around the target as if we were ballroom dancing, but on those rare occasions I freeze I can still back off or even swing around behind as long as I give what feels like a wider-then-normal berth.

This does pose an issue in that the time it takes me to correct my movements in that fashion runs me the risk of falling back out of stealth before I can make the strike, but at present it feels more like a collision issue then anything else.

Unless you really can’t move in any direction at all, in which case it may be two entirely different things.