Guild Wars 2

And such party DPS boost can be outdone by a single Life Blast, so even that boost isn’t relevant.

Against condi necros, you need to adopt a hit-and-run policy. Dodging the Signet of Spite and Reaper’s Mark are important as both will provide the necro with excellent setup if they hit, but also have long cooldowns if they miss. Jumping in, bursting, then immedietly retreating is your best policy as the necro cannot build life force without you sitting close to him, and it also greatly limits the bleeds and poison you must contend with. Necros do not stack bleeds quickly, instead relying on a constant stream of them. If you don’t give the necro time to stack the bleeds, he doesn’t do much damage.

This may need to be repeated a few times, but the cooldowns for your burst are shorter than the cooldowns of the necro’s truly threatening skills. Take advantage of this plus the fact that he cannot catch you if you just decide to run and you should find necros much easier to deal with.

Rennoko.5731:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Ghostextechnica.3270:

A simple, siphon on hit passive and a siphon on hit active for the group would have had most Necro’s rejoycing.

Seriously. This is exactly what it should’ve been and should still be.

Passive: When you hit a target, you siphon 350 (0.15) life.
Active: Unblockable. Mark a target. When any player hits this target, they siphon 250 (0.1) life from it. Lasts 5 seconds.
30 second cooldown.
Range 1200.

(And no ICD)

I would need an ICD to prevent it from proccing 5 times per mark (on the passive)… but make the ICD something like a 1/4 of a second, so multi-hit skills can work with it. I would sign on for that.

EDIT: Never mind, I see what you’re saying, Rennoko.

This, unfortunately, is a bad idea. All that would happen is Necros get the Healing Signet syndrome: they NEVER use the active. In this case, activating the signet would always be a drop in healing and damage for the necro. Yes, on rare occasions it would be activated to boost group DPS, but this is still not good balance..

Draehl.2681:

I feel that would be pretty reasonable. Change “conditions” to “condition damage” and drop the health % to 80-85%

Agreed. On top of that, it would mean condition necros could at least apply poison to attempt to get an edge on the damage vs. healing front. They would still have a difficult time getting through that first 10 (or 20)% health, but at least it wouldn’t be impossible.

Alternatively, give it some benefit against direct damage as well and keep the threshold at 90%.

Because the Guardians actually unlocked their new heal :p

Arganthium.5638:

Writetyper.1985:

THIS THREAD. THIS THREAD RIGHT HERE.

Please take note, anet. I am so sick of walking about on my engineer, seeing a necromancer, and thinking “Welp, that fight’s not going to be won, call for help and play to delay” and on the flipside seeing an ele or thief and thinking “Well, this shouldn’t take long, probably won’t even have to blow any cooldowns”. It’s not a good fight.

Skill>Counters, please.

Thief does not hard counter necro.

No, but it hard counters Engineer below 25% helath.

It’s a mesmer wearing the Citadel of Flame pants

From what I’ve seen, the trait shuts down necros entirely, and is just a speed bump for anyone else (at best).

And people are confused at the outcry saying it was horribly designed…

Whats really getting me is that Auto-immune Response is comparatively a very well designed trait. An Engineer with the trait will drop below 25% health, then cleanse, but now they are on a very difficult balancing act. They are low on health and still have direct damage coming in, but if they heal too much, then their immunity is lost. They have to try an endure the direct damage instead of healing it.

Diamond Skin eles, on the other hand, don’t have such a balancing act. They just want to be at full health, which is never a bad idea. If their regen is strong enough to out-heal the incoming damage, they’re good to go regardless.

The Game Slayer.7632:

think of something. That’s on you. adapt to the gameplay is all i can say. i need to go to bed, ill visit this forum tomorrow to talk some more. peace

1. Only ranged options for necros are condition damage, which is completely countered by Diamond Skin

2. Only power options are close-range, which rely on snares to work due to a lack of mobility skills, which is completely countered by Diamond Skin

Sooo, what do you think necros will do? I guess we can avoid losing to the trait by not playing PvP at all, which I’m sure you eles would like, but that’s kind of a bad way to run things.

The Game Slayer.7632:

alanis.6094:

The Game Slayer.7632:

ITS OUR TURN BABY!
this video can explain to you exactly whats going on.

PS: diamond skin has not shut down the necromancer class, just the necromancer condi builds. (just so that is clear)

You see all those points in the video where he discusses how “perfect imbalance” is good, but you don’t want things that are broken? Diamond Skin is what he is warning about.

No, youve almost understood it, many many people are going to use diamond skin (Including i), and then people are going to look to find counters against it. you can’t possibly say diamond skin is broken without giving it 2-3 weeks to settle in while people build to counter it.

Not quite. Diamond Skin is indeed one of those broken cases. In SC2, you can beat a battlecruiser strategy by using a ton of mutalisks. It’s difficult, but quite possible, typically involving outmaneuvering the much slower Terran capital ships. Even a head-on engagement can work if you have enough mutas (though it will be very costly). Diamond Skin is like trying to take down said battlecruisers with roaches: it results in a one-sided slaughter.

SonOfKrypton.4357:

-snipped for length-

Sooo, a whopping 6 seconds of fear on a 32 second cooldown is “permanent” now? Very strong, yes, but nowhere close to “perma-fear”.

Even so, if you get caught in that setup and you don’t have an available stunbreak, it’s your own kitten fault for failing as a PvP player. Everyone remotely competent in PvP knows that is a possible thing to happen, so you save a stunbreak for when the chain gets used, knowing full well that once it’s broken, the necro is out of options to actually combat you due to being a one-trick pony build.

Given that I’ve been running Dire Condition build in WvW without food, crystals, or any of the “Guard Leech” buffs and every so often I get beaten (varying from close matches to totally destroyed), I don’t think that the “tanky 1 spam” is really as dangerous as you make it out to be. If they were literally killing you by just auto-attacking, then maybe you’re just bad. You can’t fight a condi necro with the same playstyle as you use against other builds and expect to do well. There are strategies out there to bring them down (and most of the time, you don’t even have to change your skills or traits to do so!), so look around and think. Hint: Everyone can escape a necro, so try limiting your exposure to his scepter 1 between your bursts. This doesn’t require changing anything about your build, just the way you approach the situation.

Diamond Skin, however, the condi-necro just loses as was demonstrated in the OP’s video. Doesn’t matter how they approach the situation, they just lose.

jmatb.6307:

So much terribad from the Suckromancer community

Yall just go back to your class forum and hug your ugly minions until they slap you in the face enough to realize that your class does not revolve around condis

Just one problem: our class DOES revolve around condis. Not all of them damaging, perhaps, but it very heavily relies on conditions, whether it’s Bleeds for damage, Weakness for defense, or Fear for control, necros rely on conditions to function properly. We don’t have a single weapon that doesn’t apply conditions. All of them have a cripple, chill, or immobilize to be used in varying ways. Condition immunity outright negates the necro’s defensive capability as well as a good portion of their offense.

Berserker’s Stance can at least be waited out.

SonOfKrypton.4357:

Hmmm, not too sure, I think you may have missed Perma-Fear terror spam,

I hadn’t head of this build before. Considering our shortest possible cooldown Fear is 17 seconds (traited) and lasts for at maximum 3 seconds (all other fears being at least 32 second cooldowns traited and half the duration), I haven’t quite worked out the math for a perma-fear build. Care to enlighten us, or are you ready to admit you’re full of kitten?

Vena.8436:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

It is when you deal about 200 damage every 3/4 seconds and the ele is constantly regenerating about 400 health/second. Necro scepter does very, very little direct damage and the staff can be avoided entirely by just changing the direction of your strafe.

I think the point was more to use other weapons…

Ahh, so one of those that thinks condition builds shouldn’t exist. Got it.

If a Warrior wants a ranged weapon to deal condition damage, he doesn’t choose the Rifle (despite the bleeds on the auto). He chooses the Longbow. Likewise, he chooses the sword, not the axe for melee. If he wanted power, those choices would be reversed. To do otherwise is fighting your build, not using it.

Using Axe or Dagger for a condition nerco is the same way. The skills on those weapons do not help the necro accomplish what he wants to, as neither one brings terribly useful conditions (axe cripple can also be gotten via scepter 2). Yes, a necro could bring an axe to deal with an Ele running this trait, but he is severely gimping himself on what is, essentially, a crapshoot. Then there is the fact that the axe wouldn’t accomplish anything anyway as the ele would dodge the channeled #2, and thus any shot the necro has at getting them below that 90% threshold in a condi build (the auto attack does horrid damage).

I won’t comment on other classes, as I am not familiar enough with their builds, though I know Thief, Ele, and Guardian don’t really have a viable condition spec (Guardians likely never will).

Diamond Skin is a bad trait because it is too binary. It is either completely useless (against any power build) or turns the fight into a one-sided slaughter (against most condition builds). If it did something else against conditions (for example, negating condition damage, but still allowing for the conditions themselves), it would be a better trait. A condition build would still have difficulties getting that 10% health down due to the pathetic direct damage, but it would at least be able to counterplay the ele to some degree.

The trait needs to get reworked ASAP into something less binary (preferably some benefit against physical attacks as well). I am fine with eles getting some extra defense against conditions, especially from a grandmaster trait, but this was definitely the wrong way to do it. No matter what, someone is not having fun because of this trait as it is now, whether it’s because they spent 30 points for a trait that does not matter, or because their entire build is shut down entirely by this trait.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Well except for the fact that condition damage is significantly weaker than all other damage specs and needs to be heavily buffed…

This is actually a very solid point. Even the strongest condition builds only put out about 3k DPS on average. You take more than that from your typical power build, so what gives? Why are conditions the big evil monster, but power builds that will kill you faster are nothing to worry about?

Deli.1302:

You mean to tell me that getting an ele down to 90% hp is difficult? You must be really bad.

It is when you deal about 200 damage every 3/4 seconds and the ele is constantly regenerating about 400 health/second. Necro scepter does very, very little direct damage and the staff can be avoided entirely by just changing the direction of your strafe.

The Game Slayer.7632:

You’ve never played an ele, I can tell. Go ahead, roll a D-skin ele. I’ll laugh when you get steam-rolled.

Against a condition necro, (or heck, any condition build), it would be me doing the steam-rolling. Against anyone else, yeah, I’d get wrecked.

Get why this trait should never have existed yet?

OtakuDFifty.2965:

Finally managed to try it out myself. I was worried about how poorly it would scale with my healing power, but wow… It’s like it doesn’t scale AT ALL.

This is what the Vampiric Signet: Facts thread is about. It is all of the numeric facts of the skill compiled into one post.

Now, what is said afterward has a lot of opinion, but the first post is nothing but facts.

There’s no -1…

labesamis.9261:

Does anyone think Signet of Vampirism might be worthwhile traited with Signet Mastery? Reduces recharge time to 28 seconds (3 more than Consume Conditions) and adds 3 stacks of Might.

Nope.

The Game Slayer.7632:

Waffler.1257:

mini.6018:

Diamond skin… needs some actuall skill to pukll it off…

Please continue.

Due to the trait allocations, water attune is going to be either at half or less of its healing level. That leaves us with only our 6 skill to effectively keep us above the threshhold. Does the ele want to use his main heal to heal 1k health to maintain immunity when it could be healing for 6k of his health? what this also means is that the ele could try to maintain pressure instead and then lose his immunity, or he could stop his rotations and precisely decide whether or not to heal. which leaves you room to
A-rupt
B-continue pressure
C- heal yourself
D-set up anything your heart desires.

The skilled part lies with in the decision making process of when and when not to heal. It will take a very skilled ele to maintain his CD’s on his healing abilities and to judge if he should save them because a physical class is right around the corner, ETC, it goes on and on and on. Necro is just 1-1-1-1-1-1 scepter.

Really? That video looked sooo hard for the ele. Timing the non-use of his healing skill (it never got used) and just hitting damage constantly with some dodges thrown in.

Condition necros were difficult to counter, but it was possible with good play. Diamond Skin is impossible to counter without a complete rebuild.

Bhawb.7408:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

This I can garuntee is not the case. I’ve had 10 jagged horrors from Lich Form alone.

Reanimator has the max, not lich form.

Ah, my mistake. The wiki says the max is 8. It may be in need of updating.

Bhawb.7408:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Now I want to see if I can get 18 of the little buggers up at once. I highly doubt it, but it could be a lot of fun to see.

I am 99% sure there is an internal cap of 5.

This I can garuntee is not the case. I’ve had 10 jagged horrors from Lich Form alone.

ArmageddonAsh.6430:

I would rather it be a Chance on crit, Say 50% Chance on crit with 10second cool down. How much damage do they actually do?

A surprising amount once you factor in their bleeds. Jagged Horrors don’t do a lot of damage up front, but they add up quickly. Apparently there is a maximum of 8 from Reanimator, but also a separate pool from Lich Form (you can get 2 Mark of Horror casts in Lich Form if you time it right).

Now I want to see if I can get 18 of the little buggers up at once. I highly doubt it, but it could be a lot of fun to see.

Healing Signet isn’t that strong. Even a full Cleric’s build with their +Healing power banner only makes it tick a bit over 500/second. That insane regen amount they get is combining Healing Signet with Adrenal Health (health regen based off of adrenaline).

So, Heal<Heal+Trait, I’m fine with.

Diamond Skin may not be an overpowered trait, but it turns any fight against a condition necro (the only PvP viable build right now because the other specs are just too weak) into a complete one-sided slaughter. It has a similar effect against necros of any build, albeit for reduced duration.

This is because necros rely on conditions for defense. Blind, Fear, Cripple, Immobilize, Weakness, Chill, NONE of these work against Diamond Skin. A better way to make it so eles can get back into the meta (which had already shifted over two months ago from condi spam to heavy CC) with lots of conditions would be if Diamond Skin simply made them immune to condition damage.

For example, an Ele with Diamond Skin could be poisoned above 90% health to keep their regen in check, but the poison would not deal damage until they dropped below that threshold. This would still allow eles to be able to get valuable time against a condition necro, but it would also allow the necro to have an ability to actually respond to the ele.

It is true, though. The changes that Necro needs involve entirely changing how mechanics work or introducing new ones. Other classes, for the most part, need number tweaks.

Redscope.6215:

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

I just realized how silly this skill will be if you hit one of the ambient critters during your buff time. Instant full heal right there.

Did you try that? They probably made sure those don’t actually heal you.

Of course, if they didn’t, I wouldn’t be surprised. They’ve had their thumbs up their butts for the last few months as far as balance is concerned.

I haven’t tried it yet. My Guardian is only level 76 and I haven’t got the 25 skill points yet to unlock it.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the ambient critters count as normal. The chance of it actually happening is pretty low as they were probably killed off before you cast this skill.

The weakening Shroud change was actually what the necro community requested: a smaller effect, but actually on-demand. Now, that said, ANet grossly overestimated the weakness uptime from this triat, so they made it pretty close to worthless. At 3 seconds base, I would have been all right with it.

I just realized how silly this skill will be if you hit one of the ambient critters during your buff time. Instant full heal right there.

I bought the skill so you don’t have to:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/Signet-of-Vampirism-Facts/first#post3346547

The initial post is entirely opinion-free.

All right, other than testing to see what happens in a 3-way engagement, I believe this is everything for cold facts about this skill.

I didn’t test the actual function of the skill, just looked for the numbers.

EDIT: Yup. Active still has the ICD. Tested by using it on the target golem and using Ghastly Claws (axe 2) while watching the stacks of the debuff. Only 2 stacks were removed.

Cast time: 1-1/4 seconds
Recharge: 35 seconds (28 with Signet Mastery)
Range: 1,200
Internal Cooldown on passive: 1 second
Internal Cooldown on Active: 1 second (unique to each attacker)

At level 80, the following are the base values for the skill (tested by Heart of the Mists, refunding traits, and unequipping all armor and amulet):

Passive heal: 325
Active initial heal: 3,960
Active siphon heal: 392
Active siphon damage: 200

With 10 points into Spite and 10 points into Blood Magic (100 power and 100 healing power above base values)

Passive heal: 335
Active initial heal: 4010
Active siphon heal: 412
Active siphon damage: 207

Scaling ratios:
Passive heal: 10% healing power
Active initial heal: 50% healing power
Active siphon heal: 20% healing power
Active siphon damage: 7% power

Active siphon functions properly with Bloodthirst on tooltip (values are increased by 20%).

D I V A.6018:

Hmmm there is an initial self heal of roughly 4k..Seems legit overall?!

Tell me if wrong asumption.

The base heal for Consume Conditions and for Well of Blood is still higher than the max heal for the signet, though. And for Well of Blood, that’s the initial heal, not counting any of the 11 pulses.

Only the necro skill got butchered. The Ele one was nerfed from being 1,200 range to point-blank and gained a casting time. All of the others were buffed.

The Warrior heal actually got its cast time reduced by 75% (1 second to 1/4 second).

Rome.3192:

Just watch out for their transfer as they can return the blind back to you.

Only Putrid Mark can do that. Deathly Swarm and Plague Signet (the other transfers) will simply miss if the necro is blinded.

misterdevious.6482:

What happens if you go Full Vampire?

Siphoning can be made 20% better with Bloodthirst.
Hits can siphon with Vampiric.
Getting hit can siphon with Signet of Vampire.
Crits can siphon with Vampiric Precision.
Minions/Wells can siphon.
Signet of the Locust has an AoE siphon.
Dagger skill Life-Siphon siphons, and can be traited for shorter cooldowns and gain toughness while channeling the siphon.
Superior Sigil of Blood siphons.
Superior Sigil of Leeching siphons.
Superior Rune of Vampirism siphons 2×.

What happens if you put a bunch of these together with some healing power? Siphoning is both offensive and defensive, and they did recently improve the scaling on both parts right? I will probably play around with a vampire build and see what happens. (My Necromancer is a Norn, so he already has Wolf form which has a pretty decent life steal on a short cooldown)

Fixed one part of it. The sad part is that even with all the siphoning stuff a necro gets, the majority of the siphoning still comes from non-necro sources (sigil, runes, food).

Mia Crazymike.1780:

Maybe. Anet wants to see it in action before coming to a conclusion.

Only problem is, I don’t think it will be seen in action…

I wouldn’t say Blood Fiend or Well of Blood can’t replace Consume Conditions. They are more niche in their use, but in said use, they do greatly exceed Consume Conditions.

I’d rather see it merged with Greater Marks. That would make the resulting trait actually worth a Master tier.

Since day 1 of headstart, I’ve been running condition builds. My current setup is 20/30/0/20/0 (I like Wells, but may be swapping some of these points elsewhere).

I rather like it. I don’t get high bleed stacks on my own (I typically hover at 10-12 bleeds), but I went the route of maximizing condition damage instead to make those team-supported Epidemics oh so wonderful.

1. Equip Axe Mastery trait
2. Equip Axe
3. Fight 4 or more enemies
4. Enjoy perma-retaliation.

Well, almost. You have the cast time of Unholy Feast where you need some boon duration to have it up all the time. With Axe Mastery and five enemies, you don’t need any boon duration, though.

I’d love to be positive about this skill, but it really is that bad now. I might consider it as a utility, but not my Heal.

Underwater DS4 is a team support skill and a really good one at that. The problem is that there is only one section in the entire game where it’s even useful, let alone desirable (underwater fractal).

Tainted Shackles, though, is quite good. For a 1/4 second cast, it does a pretty good amount of damage. The immobilize is less important for necros underwater (as they are highly mobile there for some reason), but still useful.

tattoohead.3217:

Passive steals health on hit…

Sadly no, it doesn’t. That used to be the case (for the datamined version), but that got removed. It only heals when you are hit, not steal health.

Where would you be getting extra DPS from if you don’t plan on using the active? The damage portion of the passive got removed.

tattoohead.3217:

I was really trying to be positive and not jump on the QQ train…. but FML!! This skill is trash.

Yeah, ANet really thought of everything to make the skill worse. To be fair, though, even the datamined version could only have the active procced by players.