Blood Magic Specialization - A Rework Proposal

Objectives in Mind

To retain and, in some instances, extend on top of the major functions we currently have:

• Revival and bleeding control for allies
• Healing and, thematically, leeching
• Condition management

Items that are now available, though perhaps obsolete and requiring rework or removal, includes the following:

• Dagger and Warhorn traits
• Well traits

Directions worth development:

• Unique effects akin to Battle Scar, Death's Carapace, and so on, together with, for example, Vampiric themed leeching.
• Currently underdeveloped synergy with Life Force and professional mechanics within this specialization.

Proposal

All values are placeholding for PvE. For implication in PvP/WvW, consider the mechanics only.

Minor TraitsAll three minor ones remain unchanged.

• Adept - Mark of EvasionLeave a Mark of Blood when you dodge.
• Master - VampiricSiphon health whenever you hit a foe. Minions siphon health and transfer it to you.
• Grandmaster - Last RitesAs long as you are not downed, allies near you do not bleed out while downed. Gain Healing Power based on your current health.

Major Traits

1. In this proposal I am scraping off both the Dagger and Warhorn traits (Quickening Thirst & Banshee's Wail) to make room for new ones.Quickening Thirst is particularly problematic without a definite identity (the main-hand and off-hand serve different purposes) and rarely taken, if at all. Similarly, Banshee's Wail is a complete lackluster.Both weapons are in desperate need of update, and it can be done by just modifying the skills without the involvement with any trait. Better to just make the current trait effects baseline and move along.

2. Top Lane - Merge the Well traits with ally revival into one lane, the focus here is downstate management for allies. Synergy with Grandmaster Minor.

   • Adept - Ritual of Life (unchanged)Cast Lesser Well of Blood when reviving an ally. Wells of Blood revive allies every pulse.
   • Master - Ritual of Rebirth (prev: Vampiric Ritual, moved down a tier from Grandmaster)Wells gain reduced recharge time. They no longer grant Protection. Instead, allies within the Well heal and revive better.

     Ritual of Rebirth (effect): Incoming healing increased by 7%. Incoming revival increased by 7%.Number of Targets: 5

   • Transfusion (unchanged, previously in the bottom lane)Shroud skill 4 heals and partially revives nearby allies. Up to five downed allies near you teleport to your location while you're channeling shroud skill

3. Mid Lane - Incorporate Life Force and the professional mechanics for a new, sacrifice-themed lane. Pertaining to the same theme with Adept Minor.

   • Adept - Sacrificial (New)Gain Vigor and Regeneration when you receive Bleeding or Torment.

     Internal Cooldown: 10sVigor (6s)Regeneration (6s)

   • Master - (New; name yet to be assigned.)A portion of the Endurance you recover is added to your Life Force. A portion of dissipated (or consumed, as in Scourge's case) Life Force is added to your Endurance. (Life force lost to incoming damage does not add to Endurance.)

     Endurance to Life Force ratio: 25%Life Force to Endurance ratio: 25%

   • Grandmaster - Unholy Martyr (Unchanged)Entering shroud transfers conditions from allies to you. Exiting shroud consumes conditions currently on you and converts them to life force.

4. Bottom Lane - Vampiric Presence has been reworked, dropped down a tier, and now renamed Vampiric Essence. The lane will function around this effect. Blood Bond is removed, while the Bleeding theme will retained with the new trait in the Master tier. The effect will only be shared with allies if the new Grandmaster tier trait is selected. Pertaining to the same them with Master Minor.

   • Adept - Vampiric EssenceGain Vampiric Essence for yourself.

     Vampiric Essence (effect)Siphons health from the target you hit or apply Bleeding on. The effect is multiplied per stack of Bleeding you inflict on your targets.Life Siphon Damage: 32 (0.0333)Life Siphon Healing: 32 (0.0333)Life Steal Interval for direct damage: 1/2 s (Unchanged)Life Steal Interval for Bleeding Application: 0s

   • Master - (New; name yet to be assigned.)Hitting an enemy with Bleeding stacks above the threshold causes Weakness. Vampiric Essence is more effective against weakened foes.

     Internal Cooldown: 10 s (per target)Bleeding stack threashold: 10Weakness (6s)Increase in effect: 20%

   • Grandmaster - Vampiric FeastYour share Vampiric Essence with your allies. (The bonus from the Master tier trait will also shared via effect source tracking) Vampiric Essence increases its effect while you are in Shroud.

     Number of Targets: 5 (Unchanged)Radius: 360 (Unchanged)Increase in effect for self: 100%

Generally speaking, the top lane would be suited for group combat, the mid lane would be more suited for solo, and the bottom lane would be suited for any controlled instances with a composition heavy on condition damage. The outcome may vary for different professions though. For example, Condition Soulbeast would certainly benefit hugely with its frequent Bleeding stacking, while Burn Firebrand barely any. The rest of the professions should be more or less normal.

Inputs are welcome!

Why do you add endurance management onto the necromancer's tool? In essence I understand that you'd want to but, unfortunately, the shroud is already supposed to substitute to any lack of "dodge" that the necromancer have compared to other professions. All in all, you mess with the necromancer's sustain by adding more frame of damage avoidance while the profession is designed to minimize avoidance and instead mitigate damage through health point.

On the topic of the discarded traits:Quickening thrist: This trait grant an easily achievable CD reduction for dagger skills and dagger off hand is far from being a bad choice of weapon. Dagger main hand is also not that bad even if it's generally harder to make use of the CD reduction in mele range. The movement speed but is a bit messed up but sometime welcome.

Banshee wail suffer from 2 issue, it's trait competition and the warhorn skills. A better way to fix that would be to make warhorn sexier instead of removing the trait.

Vampiric ritual: I quite like how you replaced it by ritual of rebirth however, in itself vampiric ritual isn't bad, it's even a pretty strong trait, but it's so situational and selfish that it make it unappaeling.

On the topic of Blood magic:Personally, I don't think that the traitline is bad per se. The issue would be more that it's to focused on healing for a support/sustain traitline. No other profession have such amount of focus on their core traitlines. It's also important to take into account that life siphon effects are poor in term of damage increase due to them not being able to crit and thus failing to benefit from ferocity.

For me there is only 2 traits that are really in need of work in BM: vampiric and transfusion.

• Vampiric because the focus on minions of this trait is to strong. It's to the point that this single minor trait have as much impact on the efficiency of minions than all 3 DM major dedicated to minion combined.
• Transfusion because of the teleport. The intent behind the addition was good but at the same time it make difficult to use the skill tied to this trait out of the very purpose of rallying players. Making it easy to put players that you wanted to rally into danger instead of saving them.

For what its worth, the minion trait should be moved to death magic. Minionmasters have no room to spare to take bloodmagic.

I like quite some of your ideas.You have to change the numbers of your new master mid lane trait (the one converting endurance in life force and vice versa), tho.Keep in mind that the number values of these 2 ressources are extremely different.

A necromancer has more than 13k life force without any vitality, this can get enhanced further. The base value of endurance is 100. Spending all your endurance will result in you gaining just 25 life force (which is basically absolutely meaningless), while life force dissipates (base shroud) with 3% per second. So the necromancer will lose around 400 life force per second. 25% of that value is 100.

This means that spending endurance will result in nothing, but if you enter death shroud, then the necromancer will fill his endurance completely every second. As long as you are in death shroud, you would literally be able to perma dodge, Which shouldn't be a thing.If you really want this mechanic in the trait line (honestly, I would ditch it), then the conversion ratio from endurance to life force needs to be higher and the conversion from life force to endurance needs to get reduced a ton.

The bottom traits dont make sense in the grand scheme of things. All traits are tuned in a way that you have a choice in each tier, these traits only work together.

Also the middle tier is very generic. Especially the second trait is overly complicated to balance / use. It also could be a general endurance increase while in shroud and vice versa. The thing here is necromancer really has no access to endurance, which makes it so that you are yet again forced to pick the other trait in line. Thats not the way anet handles traitlines and also limits the variation.

blood magic already got a rework and imo its fine. would like to see changes to minor adept and warhorn traits tho.

I like some of these as well, along with others who have commented on this thread.Personally I am not a fan of the evading (middle) line - Necors are already hard to kill.I also think that there isn't a lot of sacrificing going on in the mid line - it's just adding effects on top of effects.Also, I'd like to see the vampiric support aspect be brushed up a little. I do really enjoy your top line as well.