Guild Wars 2

A post I made on Reddit on this topic: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/10wgz2/how_healing_affects_necromancers/

I didn’t cover (and still don’t know) how +healing benefits Transfusion or Deathly Invigoration.

It’s stability. In sPvP people make sure to bring it along to help with stomps and revives. Fear can be blocked, too, I think. Same for the guardian book situation, he used stability on himself before casting the ability.

If you use Corrupt Boon, the stability will get corrupted into fear and it will interrupt the casting.

Wait, so how would the home servers ever fill up if everyone is just going to the underflow server?

Wow, how are you getting 9k damage? 30 in spite, 30 in soul reaping, Berserker’s gear?

That’d be a nice little buff, chuiu, good idea.

Xander.7260:

You do mean WHEN hit, right? The passive effect on these is a defensive effect. You have to take damage to gain that LF.

Yep, when hit. You’re going to take the damage anyway, may as well gain life force at the same time.

Xander.7260:

lettucemode.3789:

None of the things you mentioned are comparable to the necromancer’s 3.2k healing on dagger 2, which is on a 12s cooldown.

What are you sacrificing for this heal? 3.2k health return on a 3.5 second channel, in which time you’ve hopefully either immobilized or are able to kite the attacker right? Because that window is enough time for 1-2 swings which completely overtake/offset the heal.

And what are you sacrificing in damage to get such a health return? How much damage are you doing during that channel?

It costs 20 points in Blood Magic and gear with precision on it. Yes, enemies are often chilled, immobilized, or crippled against me. With power and precision gear it can do 4k damage during the channel.

Oh, and lots of fights go on that long. Thieves if they use stealth a lot, guardians, engineers, defensively-traited warriors, and the like.

I do mostly WvW (no sPvP) and fight thieves all the time. I’m on Sanctum of Rall and we’re up against Sea of Sorrows this week (2 weeks?). I think I’ve fought against some proper thieves.

Very few thieves I have fought use Roll for Initiative. Even if they do have RFI, it doesn’t cure Poison. As for the signet, most thieves I encounter use the stealth heal for big backstab crits.

I don’t understand your logic about the dagger 2 ability. 3k healing on 12s cooldown is weak? Doing 3k damage during that time is weak? I simply disagree.

I can take 5-6 mobs at a time in PvE and don’t have a problem tagging things in Orr.

You say that none of those abilities I mentioned help catch thieves. Well, I adjusted my expectations when fighting thieves. I simply don’t expect to kill them anymore unless they make a big mistake. It’d be nice to be able to catch them but when they can just drop Shadow Refuge and use their heal for 15s seconds of stealth….I stopped trying, really. As soon as they pop that I usually /bow and go do something else.

My build is 0/25/10/20/15, dagger/warhorn + staff. Power/precision gear.

It’s currently bugged in that it doesn’t work with condition damage. I use it on my power/life siphon necro because it’s not that difficult to get a few conditions on an enemy. Most of the time you’ll get a 4% bonus, which seems small but it adds up over time. If you’re up against someone who is stacking conditions on you, just transfer them right back and suddenly you’re getting 12% damage increase. Also works against Guardians with “Save Yourselves!”: simply use Corrupt Boon and enjoy the extra damage.

I disagree with your analysis. You seem to think that a thief needing to spend 30 points and a utility slot to be an effective vampire is somehow preferable to us only needing to spend 10-15 points (I’d argue 20). How is spending more to achieve the same thing better?

The healing on attack signet is nice, and so is the flexibility on switching it out, but that only works on his basic attacks, right? Necro siphon works on pretty much every ability we have and can also happen again on crit, that’s probably why our numbers are less. And if he’s using the signet, he can’t remove conditions very effectively unless he’s in stealth, so put poison on him and laugh as your autoattacks are now siphoning for more than his. If he puts poison on you, just transfer it right back.

And if he switches it out, he’s not siphoning life at all, so he automatically becomes a worse vampire. Ours is traited, meaning we can use whatever heal we want and still enjoy the siphoning. Again, how is the thief being forced to use a specific heal to be a vampire better?

If he does go into stealth, you have options to draw him out or chase him away. Enfeebling blood, marks, DS 4, all of those have terrific AoE effects while also defending you. Cast Chillblains on his Shadow Refuge and rub your belly with amusement.

None of the things you mentioned are comparable to the necromancer’s 3.2k healing on dagger 2, which is on a 12s cooldown.

Oh, and shortbow is not 1 attack every .25s, not even with quickness. It’s less than a second but not that quick. I’d say he can get 400-500 hp per second (being generous here) if hitting a group. But if he’s hitting a group of people, why don’t you just all go kill him? If you’re in a 1v1 fight he’s not going to use shortbow for the healing anyway, he’s going to use his dagger.

…I’m not really sure what point you’re trying to make. All classes have to go to a city to retrain traits. What utilities are you referring to specifically, can you elaborate?

I’ve played a life-siphoning necro for probably 2 months and I’m not sure what you guys are on about, it works very well for me. I don’t play sPvP but in PvE I can take 5+ mobs at once, and in WvW I regularly get multiple kills before I go down.

One string of dagger 1 attacks heals for 250. One cast of dagger 2 heals for 340 * 8 (skill) + 38 * 8 (vampiric) + 51 * 4 (vampiric precision) = about 3.2k health on a 12s cooldown. If I have Locust Swarm on all those hits and crits will siphon life to me too.

Just in case you guys care, here are some tips for playing a siphoning necro:

Don’t trait for wells. They don’t last very long and will only siphon 240 health (with Vampiric Rituals) AT BEST against a single opponent, that’s less than a single dagger 1 autoattack chain. Put just 20 points into Blood Magic and take Bloodthirst and Vampiric Precision. If you want to use a well as one of your utilities that is fine, but the trait points are better spent elsewhere.

Going along with the above tip, use gear with power and precision in it. I am currently experimenting with Rampager’s because I am trying to make my staff more useful, but Knight’s or Berserker’s are also excellent choices.

Use Spectral Walk or Spectral Armor as one of your utilities. One of their effects is that you gain 3% life force on hit. As soon as DS runs out, use one of those abilities and watch your life force skyrocket. Re-engage DS as soon as you can, now you’ve gotten to use it two or even three times in one fight.

Use things that will help you in melee, since that’s where you’ll be with a dagger mainhand, since that’s what you’ll be using for a life siphon build. Last Gasp, warhorn offhand, toughness, abilities that inflict Weakness (Weakening Shroud is godly).

In WvW, I will sometimes die in a big group clash. As I am running back from spawn I will see the experience gain pop up, “300xp” or whatever. This is because I tagged enemies during the battle, but they didn’t die for a little while after. Maybe that’s what is causing the rallies – someone they tagged a while ago never got out of combat and finally died.

yea

Kardiamond.6952:

I always thought +Healing didn’t affect Dagger #2, good to know.

I think you have some good point.

About Well of blood, I think it’s situational. I’m about 90% of the time in WvW. I move around during fight, and I always have condition on me. I think in dynamic WvW fights, CC is better for me overall, even with the healing well traits. Consuming a cripple, a poison and a burn can be vital in WvW.

But It was more about the +300 healing stats, and you are right they affect more abilities then I thought. But to say it’s a small bonus would be wrong. +300 cond damage isn’t minor. It’s pretty good in my opinion. That’s like 3 exotic.

I see your point, but I still think healing is lacking if you compare to secondary stats of other traits line.

Convince me more! :P

I can try

From what I have heard on high-level tournament streams, 100 condition damage will increase each tick of damage from your conditions by 5. So that 300 condition damage on a single stack of a 5-second bleed will increase its damage by 75. Compare that to getting an additional 300 healing + 30 per condition on Consume Conditions, or 1300 bonus healing for Well of Blood.

Of course, if you stack multiple bleeds quickly, as Necros tend to do, that +15 damage per tick will start to add up very, very fast.

It all depends on your playstyle really, if you like playing with conditions then the +300 condition damage is much more valuable to you. If you are going for support or a power-based build I think the +healing would help more. To each his own That’s one of the great things about GW2, the build diversity among classes is greater than any other game I’ve seen.

Here is a post I made on Reddit on this topic: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/10wgz2/how_healing_affects_necromancers/

Basically, each ability has its own internal modifier that it multiplies your healing stat by before adding it to the amount healed. For example, the Consume Conditions base heal will increase by an amount equal to 1 x (healing stat), but the amount healed per condition consumed will heal by .1 x (healing stat).

When making builds, you should first consider the Major traits you want, then the Minor traits, and stats last. Think of the +300 healing and other trait stat bonuses as just that: small bonuses. If you don’t value the traits in Blood Magic as highly as the traits in other lines then by all means, avoid it.

I think that some of them are pretty strong though, Bloodthirst, Mark of Evasion, Ritual Mastery, and Vampiric Precision are my current favorites. Dagger Mastery is fun if you run D/D, Ritual of Life and Transfusion are awesome in dungeons, and Vampiric Rituals lets you fight 5-6 mobs at once (you are healed when the wells pulse for each enemy, AND from the damage the wells do because of Vampiric).

As for +healing, it doesn’t affect siphoning, like you said, I think this is intended but others disagree. The only exception is the dagger 2 ability, which scales with +healing and also benefits from the Bloodthirst trait.

Here is a post I made on Reddit that explains how +healing affects the various necro healing skills: http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/10wgz2/how_healing_affects_necromancers/

You will notice that some abilities benefit more than others, and some aren’t affected by your +healing at all, for example the Blood Fiend attack. However, Well of Blood scales by over 4x your +healing stat, which is one of the largest in the game I think.

Arvid is right, ummaner, that is the same bug. Since you’re in DS the animation bugs and it doesn’t look like you have become mist, but you are still invulnerable and can’t use abilities for the 3s. That is the 6th rune set bonus triggering prematurely. Remove 1 of your armor pieces and you will see it doesn’t happen anymore.

Unpredictability, I tested that very recently. It doesn’t increase the swiftness boon time, but it DOES increase the amount of time you are allowed to teleport back and receive life force on hit – just not on the tooltip. Mouse over the buff you get and check the duration that way. It increased from 8s to 12s when I tested it.

My thoughts:

Life Stealing
Your numbers are correct, but I think you underestimate the effectiveness. A dagger 1 combo is 4 hits in about 2 seconds. All four hits with Vampiric Precision (heals for 51 with Bloodthirst) and Bloodthirst will heal you for about 250 hp. That is a LOT imo. Especially considering that you will get multiple dagger combos off during a fight, and the life siphon also works on any damage done by all your other abilities…it’s not unreasonable to assume you’d heal several thousand health during a fight.

Especially with dagger 2. In WvW recently I have noticed this ticking for over 300 healing on myself. I can’t remember the exact number so we’ll say 300. It hits 8 times, so that is 2400 healed. PLUS 38 * 8 = 304 from Vampiric, PLUS an average of 51 * 4 = 204 with Vampiric Precision (if you crit on half of the hits). That is almost 3k healed with every dagger 2, and I was underestimating because I know it siphons for more than 300 per tick. With traits you can put this spell on a 10s cooldown.

TL; DR: I think siphoning is fine as is.

Warhorn
I’ve used the warhorn extensively and disagree that it is an underwhelming weapon, especially in WvW. Even classes that are built for condition cleansing can’t get away if you run alongside them with Locust Swarm on. With the trait, you can improve the daze from Warhorn 4 to 3s – that an AoE daze, remember. Super useful for cancelling heals.

Fear
Not sure why you say we don’t have access to fear. We have 5 fears (DS 3, Staff 5, Reaper’s Protection trait, Fear of Death trait, and down state 2). If you build appropriately you can get these up from 1s duration to 2.5s duration, as mentioned in some other thread a while ago. I’d rather have several good fears than the 1 great fear that some other classes have, personally.

I agree with everything else, nice post, and thanks.

Hey danni, trying out the build and really like it. I’ve been trying to figure out a power-based lifesiphon build for some time. I like your approach of depending upon your gear for the damage while focusing your traits elsewhere (not in Spite). I used your build in WvW for some time today and it works really well.

I made some minor changes. Instead of Quickening Thirst, I opted for Greater Marks in Death Magic – I really like the larger marks for defending towers in WvW and it makes them much easier to land against single opponents. I also swapped out Well of Suffering for Corrupt Boon. With WoC I felt like I was trying too hard to set someone up for the big combo, whereas with CB I feel like I have more flexibility in fights.

Thanks for the post!

Dunno what to tell you, man, Thieves and Engineers are the only classes I have trouble catching. Unless they build super defensive, but I don’t find that too common in WvW.

Oozo.7856:

But yes, currently most classes can easily disengage from a necro.

It’s not just about buffing our snares or roots. Take a look at this trait from the most mobile of classes, the thief.

http://www.gw2db.com/traits/1700-fleet-of-foot

There are a lot of condition removal traits and skills out there. Many of them passive. Conditions are, generally speaking, weak in this game for controlling other players. So, when you have a mobile build with good condition removal (which all well-built mobile builds will have) you get something which can’t be “horn locked” by a necromancer or any other class.

The only way a necro could lock down a class is if you gave them snares which couldn’t be removed, but that is not going to happen. So, the balance that Jon is talking about between the mobile build and the lockdown necro will never exist.

Prove me wrong.

Snares that can’t be removed? Locust Swarm and stick on them. The Frozen from Staff 3 isn’t removed by that trait you listed.

I play a good deal of WvW and not a lot gets away from my necro. Thieves are the most slippery, for sure. But the trick is to learn when your enemy is going to want to get away. During fights I save certain abilities as they get low – staff 4, spectral grasp, dark path. Then as they turn to run I have several options to catch them. Even if one misses or is cleansed I can quickly switch to another.

Thieves are the toughest for sure, but it helps if you run towards them when they hit 1/3 of their life, because that’s when they’re planning to run away. They can still trigger Marks in stealth, so use those liberally.

Death by Chickens.6902:

I never have much of a problem closing in on enemies, I actually like the way Dark Path works.

I’m curious if anyone else feels that Necro doesn’t have enough ways to escape from harm? Fear is powerful, sure, but with such a short duration and the fact that it is single target, it rarely allows me a chance to escape in battles larger than 1v1. The staff is great, but the casting times / animations are just long enough that most classes have no problem rooting, stunning, dazing, knocking me down before I’m able to hit them with the #5 fear.

I think Necro desperately needs a ground targeted shadowstep skill (akin to Thief SB skill #5). The problem with Necro is that although the DS is useful, it does not give me enough of a buffer to protect from high burst DPS. Now, this is without spec’ing the DS trait line, which I haven’t used in a while. But its always seemed too lackluster, too many points just to get DS stability and more lifeforce. I’m sick of out playing everyone else, when all it takes is a single knockdown before I get swarmed by 20 angry Defenders in WvW. My DS gets destroyed in seconds, and even with 25k plus hp I’m dead rather quickly.

I see elementalists go into mist form and run away, guardians knock me around like a ragdoll, warriors roll up on me super fast, thieves disappear to safety… I don’t want more ways of getting close, I want some way of escaping that depends more on my situational awareness than chain crippling, fearing, hitting swiftness and hoping for the best.

Now, this is mostly based on my experiences in WvW, where necro is da bomb IF you can consistently stay out of range. As soon as the gap gets closed by more than a couple people I’m in serious trouble.

You can transfer that immobilize off of you with staff 4 or Plague Signet. I never really have trouble getting away from people with my many condition transfers and Spectral Walk.

In that case, wait for your enemy to dodge twice before using it.

They’ve been stealth-fixing things for a while now. Horrors don’t rally opponents anymore. Life siphoning works properly on every source of direct damage you deal, including wells hitting multiple targets.. Plague Signet works fine and I haven’t noticed Corrupt Boon or Spectral Grasp missing or acting up for a while. Come play again

We can remove 1 condition on ourselves every 5 seconds. Near to Death + Shrouded Removal.

As others have said above, Necros have a large amount of condition removal that isn’t traited. I have 3-4 ways to get conditions off of myself in my builds, some of which are weapon skills and all of which remove multiple or all conditions. Consume Conditions, Putrid Mark, Dagger 4, the list goes on. IMO, other classes need that “remove 1 condition every 10 seconds” to keep up with us.

There are a couple of cake shops within 20 minutes of Anet headquarters, according to Google.

Ithir Darkleaf.7923:

That’s the matter. I agree with every point you exposed there. Patience is over for most of us.
I know some people will still have it and some people who still enjoy playing a broken profession, but facts are facts, we have a huge bug list and I know they probably are working on all of them but why they don´t give us an update just like they did with rangers?

Don’t miss the update point, and I’m looking to you Ratphink, I agree with most of your points as well but seriously, keep an eye on the necromancer forum and come back here again and tell us I’m wrong about the 90% dissapointment thing. I think every necromancer (those who still enjoy it and those who started to hate to play with bugmancer like me) agrees on that we need an update. Or am I terrible confused and I just dreamed all those topics in the forum?

I agree that we need a bunch of bug fixes and that we could use an update.

But when you say “90%” or “most of us” you’re referring to the forum community. The best statistic I have seen for forum involvement of any game was like 10%, meaning that 10% of the game’s active players are also active on the forum. The other 90% are busy playing the game and having fun, probably noticing the same issues, but not so down about them that they would take the time to post here. 90% of 10% is 9%.

So yes, the necro forum community is unhappy, but that is not necessarily representative of the necro community as a whole.

I think Axe/Focus would be your best bet for second set (Axe 3 and Focus 4 do ok direct AoE), but it’s not going to be as good as your Staff. I haven’t ever played to farm but I think Staff would be enough because of the marks and the fact that 1 pierces enemies. Feel free to experiment though, if you’re farming you can spare some cash to test out the different sets.

The reduced well cooldown trait is a 20-point trait in Blood Magic. alanis also suggested the reduced cooldown on Life Transfer, which is also a good idea, that is a 10-point trait in Soul Reaping. Increased damage on Marks is a 20-point trait in Spite.

Onedoesnotsimply.5740:

Its a viscious cycle they created with the LACK of communication. Where do we go to communicate with them then?

The definition of a vicious cycle is that both sides created and perpetuate it :P

As for contacting them, I don’t know. Call them. Send them a letter or email. Coordinate with others on the forum to see if someone lives near Anet offices so they can go there directly. Use the in-game bug report feature to report each of the bugs in the stickied bug list just in case they aren’t using the list.

Or maybe there isn’t one, which I think is a good thing. I wouldn’t want to deal with the amount of vitrol some games’ forums can put out either.

Alright. GL with the mods, and here’s to hoping we get a red post soon.

Ithir, the mods on this forum are not the game designers and devs :P they’re just forum mods, possibly unrelated to Anet, and even if they left the threads up they can’t do anything to help. If you keep creating threads after you’ve been asked to stop it just comes off as whiny, the mods are just following the rules. The more of these threads that are created, the less likely Anet is to post here IMO. Vicious cycle etc.

The primary purpose of these forums is not communication with Anet, it is to discuss the game with other players. If Anet employees want to post, that’s great. But I don’t like it when developer interaction becomes expected, like it’s our right that they post here, rather than an occasional cool thing.

Use Well of Suffering/Darkness/Corruption as one or more of your utilities. They tick for damage in their AoE so you’ll be able to tag a large group. There’s a Staff CD reduction trait in Death Magic you could consider taking to put out more marks as well. The larger radius on marks trait (also in Death Magic) is a good idea too.

Scepter/Dagger are good choices for AoE but they mainly do their damage through bleeds, whereas marks and wells do some direct damage, so they are your best bet. I think there’s also a trait in Spite that increases your Mark damage.

Well of Suffering is the highest-damaging well, and Putrid Mark does the most direct damage of all the marks.

Ohhhhhhhhhhhhh I’m an idiot. I should read threads more thoroughly before posting, haha. Deleted it.

Just tested, Bloodthirst does increase the siphon amount Vampiric Rituals.

The Bloodthirst trait, which increases life siphoning amounts, DOES work on the well’s life siphon. If I wasn’t at work I’d go test it right now, but I’ve used wells + life siphoning extensively and I never noticed a problem. I’ll test it when I get home and confirm.

In my experience, it is definitely worth it for PvE and dungeons. All those little +21 ticks (closer to 40 with the trait) really add up once you’ve got 5-7 mobs stacked up. Your health bar will go up and down and back up again pretty quickly, which is a cool feeling.

In WvW I have found that it is not worth it to go for the 30 points in Blood Magic when doing a siphon build. Siphoning is not affected by +healing and it’s very difficult to get multiple players to sit in the wells. Wells are still worth using because of the reduced cooldown and 3s of protection on cast, just not worth those extra 10 points in Blood Magic imo. So in that case I would recommend putting those other 10 points into Spite.

I don’t play much sPvP so I don’t know how it would work there.

danni.1824:

If DS wears off, swap on spectral walk, be prepared to heal yourself, if you’re being hit, watch your life force shoot through the roof. Re-engage death shroud.

This is awesome, I never thought of it before. Spectral Walk is gonna find a spot on my utility bar, now thanks for the tip!

That’s the targeting indicator only. Once you cast the mark it will be full size.

In all the high-level sPvP streams I watch, with necros like Xelfer and Powerr, they are all using wells. Well of Darkness gives you near-invulnerability to melee. Well of Blood scales the best with +healing (Xelfer uses a hybrid build, Shaman’s amulet) and if allies use projectile finishers through it, it removes conditions from them. During fights for the clocktower on Kyhlo I’ve seen one or both of them use Well of Power to convert the large number of incoming conditions to boons. Converting conditions to boons is HUGE in terms of battle effectiveness and I’m not aware of any other ability in the game that does the same thing.

They have high cooldowns because of how strong their effects are. The CD reduction trait is absolutely worth it. Wells are also the same size as capture points (except for the big middle one on that one map), meaning that if an enemy wants to stop you from taking or neutralizing the point they are forced to stand in it. Don’t forget the trait for 3s of protection on cast, and it’s AoE protection too, meaning it will hit all allies on the point with you. They’re not very effective in WvW because there is a lot of space for enemies to dodge or move away, but in sPvP they are very, very strong abilities.

I use them in PvE to farm groups of mobs in Orr. Just aggro a bunch (5-7), drop Wells of Blood and Suffering, then staff AoE them all down. If you take the “wells siphon health to you on pulse” trait your health never goes below half. Really cool.

Xelfer and Powerr interact with their viewers, feel free to drop by their streams and ask them questions you may have about wells or other necro stuff.
www.twitch.tv/xelfer
www.twitch.tv/matchlesspowerr (I think)

TurboWhale, I couldn’t reproduce that. I got healed for the same amount it said on the tooltip, which means it removes the poison before healing. I don’t ever remember it working differently, either.

Fynd, I disagree. I use the spell recharge option. I tested it in the Mists, removing and adding the trait several times. Each time, both focus spells “flipped” on the bar. Reaper’s Touch did NOT fail at any range in 900-1200 and the cooldown was 14s after use. I’m not crazy :P

…..okay, I just tested it a little bit more. The bug is fixed IN THE MISTS ONLY. In PvE (and probably WvW) it’s bugged. weird.

@Levian
It’s only a single stack of might, too…which is like what, 1% increased outgoing damage? :P I like the trait on paper – gaining just enough of an edge to win in a close fight – but I don’t think a single stack of might is going to do it…

After the new patch that said “Fixed a lot of exploits and bugs” I went through as much of this bug list as I could solo to see if anything’s been fixed.

Profession Mechanic
NB0001: Still triggers on any damage in DS, but you can still cast spells and attack while the invulnerable effect is on you.

NB0002: Still happens, can’t cast anything while under its effects.

NB0003: Still happens.

NB0004: Still happens.

NB0005: Barbed Precision DOES trigger bleeds while in DS. FIXED

Staff
NB0120: Still happens.

Dagger
NB0093: Still only makes the necro lose 1 condition per bounce/hit.

Focus
NB0014: Didn’t bounce to any minions while I was testing it.

NB0121: Reaper’s Touch now has a range of 1200 and recharge time of 14 when using the Spiteful Talisman trait in sPvP. Still bugged in PvE and WvW. KINDA SORTA FIXED

Utility
NB0018: I tested Spectral Grasp against many Mists NPCs on all kinds of terrain. It never once failed while I was in range. So probably fixed! FIXED

NB0094: Cooldown timer still bugged.

NB0102: I couldn’t get the combo field to trigger at all I’m bad at this game…

NB0022: Could not reproduce. I have not noticed this skill missing when I have used it. FIXED

NB0023: Putrid Explosion still does not trigger Death Nova. Death Nova DOES trigger when the necromancer goes into the downed state (wtf?).

NB0025: Still bugged.

NB0113: The tooltip says “creates a field that poisons foes and leaves them weakened.” It applies weakness and poison to a foe once for each time the enter the circle. So if a foe enters the circle, then leaves it, then enters it again, they get the conditions applied twice, once for each time they entered. I think the tooltip is accurate as written. FIXED

NB0112: Still behaves that way.

Spite Traits
NB0095: Still does not apply the damage of Spinal Shivers.

NB0109: Still doesn’t work, tested against Mists NPCs. I could have sworn it worked a few days ago in WvW…oh well.

Curses Traits
NB0038: Still only applies 1 stack of bleed.

NB0040: Does not increase Spectral Walk swiftness duration, but DOES increase the length of time you are allowed to teleport back to the original location from 8s to 12s. I think that counts as behaving correctly. However, the tooltip still says 8s, so that’s still bugged. FIXED, MOSTLY

NB0042: Still doesn’t work with Plague of Darkness.

NB0044: Fear damage DOES appear in the combat log. FIXED

NB0084: Icon still changes, still bugged.

Death Magic Traits
NB0046: Chillblains is still the only one with the larger targeting indicator.

NB0053: Still doesn’t reduce minion active skill recharge time. I think this is intended, though.

Blood Magic Traits
NB0056: Still does not increase the siphon amount.

NB0065: Still doesn’t scale with +healing, but I’m confident this is intended behavior. +healing didn’t increase health siphoning in GW1 either, and we have access to the Bloodthirst trait if we want it increased. I think this “bug” should be removed from the list.

NB0066: Could not reproduce. Siphoning occurs on every skill use, every tick of a well…all attacks trigger it. FIXED

NB0100: Still doesn’t siphon in those forms.

NB0068: Siphons for 32/hit at level 80, and yes, it’s affected by Bloodthirst. FIXED

NB0069: Critical hits on skills DO trigger the siphon. eagly, Necrotic Grasp crits do trigger Vampiric Precision, so does everything else. FIXED

NB0107: Still doesn’t trigger in those forms.

Soul Reaping Traits
NB0007: Still does the wonky cooldown numbers thing.

Cheers!

Haven’t heard of this before now. Did you catch it on stream? Do you have a link to an example stream clip when it happened?

Not an unfair assumption to make, just wondering.

It procs when you finish the revive. I’ve used it and it works on downed players, I don’t know if it works on dead players.

I don’t use it so I can’t comment, but out of curiosity do you know where it was stated that this was a band-aid fix?

It could be that they are not in range. Since the ability can also be used as a stun break it will let you use it even if your target is too far away, and you won’t get the “out of range” error.

Mesmers can remove the stability with Arcane Thievery, and necros can Corrupt it off…there are a few other boon removals in the game, too, maybe that’s what happened to you. I haven’t ever gotten knocked down in Plague or Lich form with stability up.

Wasn’t there some Ranger ability that ignored stability?

What Ascii said: Lich Form’s stability will linger if you exit Lich Form early, but Plague’s won’t. 30s of stability is pretty nice.

@Levian: The stability from the Foot in the Grave trait – stability for 3s upon entering DS – lingers when you leave DS. If you take that trait, then get an additional +20% boon duration from either runes or the Death Magic line, you have just enough time to enter DS, immediately exit it, and start and complete a full stomp before the stability wears off.

It’s a free stomp every 10s (with a few exceptions). I spent a while testing it and came up with a fun WvW build based on it.

Combined with Death Magic trait 4, 3s of protection whenever a well is dropped.