Very upset about the removal of Vampiric Rituals GM in Blood Magic.

Vampiric Rituals was one of the few traits in BM line that made running wells worth the while. The life siphoning meant that you could sustain in fights against perma-stun Soulbeasts and spellbreakers. You didn't need the barrier to help you counter the explosive damage received when fighting against other professions. Giving me barrier after I've healed "beyond my maximum health" is extremely redundant for me as a Reaper, as I'm almost always at about 75 - 90% HP.

The decrease in recharge time for wells certainly doesn't compensate for the loss of life siphoning, nor does giving me barrier. They mentioned they wanted a more general use out of this trait, but instead they've completely stripped away any decent functionality of said trait, and there's hardly any connection to wells in it's entirety.

It feels like an ANET staff got beaten in WvW or PvP with a build that used a lot of well siphoning and got upset over it.

I completely agree, the traits made wells a little smart and great for surviving.

Chopped away to become more pure dumb spam-able room for blood bank.

Anet was thinking for the bad players who faceroll their keyboard who was mistakenly hitting their heals.

Change was not needed, wells wasn't meta yet this update aim to reward bad players and killed off smart functions for spam-able wells purpose for damage only and blood bank which will only benefit core nerco.

@Jasonbdj.4021 said:I completely agree, the traits made wells a little smart and great for surviving.

Chopped away to become more pure dumb spam-able room for blood bank.

Anet was thinking for the bad players who faceroll their keyboard who was mistakenly hitting their heals.

Change was not needed, wells wasn't meta yet this update aim to reward bad players and killed off smart functions for spam-able wells purpose for damage only and blood bank which will only benefit core nerco.

Wells not meta..? Weren't they taken basically everywhere because they are powerful and effective? Are we playing different games?

@"Blocki.4931" said:Wells not meta..? Weren't they taken basically everywhere because they are powerful and effective? Are we playing different games?

I think that he meant that the "trait" was not meta.

@Dadnir.5038 said:

@"Blocki.4931" said:Wells not meta..? Weren't they taken basically everywhere because they are powerful and effective? Are we playing different games?

Correct, the trait is not meta.

@Demonhead.7584 said:Vampiric Rituals was one of the few traits in BM line that made running wells worth the while.

and now Anet changed wells to free up this trait slot that you don't have to take to make wells worth the while. Honestly, does anyone read the patch notes?

Wells were stronger in WvW than other game modes due to Necro-stacking. While unwanted by Necromancers, everyone can agree that Necro AoE gave too much pressure. It's nerfed now and Necro is not the only profession to get nerfed.

Well, if it is not 100% apparent, the goal was a to remove the aoe prot and life steal sustain without pissing off the playerbase by selling the change as a straight buff, 100% PR BS. Now we have same long CDs, but no aoe prot and life steal option. The anet apologists can stop with the act.

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Demonhead.7584 said:Vampiric Rituals was one of the few traits in BM line that made running wells worth the while.

The issue with that is the reason people ran wells was because it was utility that provide protection and minor sustain via life leech effect.Both were removed with the loss of the trait making wells more or less just damage in most cases.

Anet was going to compensate by making them better to use with any build by reducing their cooldowns with the idea that they still wouldn't give protection or life leech.Now the cooldowns are going back up in competitive modes and the mechanical effects are also no longer in the game which objectively makes them worse to use with the majority of builds. Because the main reason you brought them was for the sustain zone control and sustain increased synergy. Without the bonus mechanics and the skills having higher cooldowns they are mostly worth less than they were before regardless of the build you run. The only real improvement is well of darkness. Every other well at this point is worth less than it was before. If you are going to remove a trait for utility skills then compensate the skills in some way that makes since to the mechanics the trait provided at a base level. If you dont do that then you are not making the skills better to be used with other builds you just made a trait line worth less and the skills harder to use with other builds. It was sneaky way of nerfing blood magic and wells all together and thats what upsets me and several other people. The same can nearly be said for signets specifically vamp signet's passive.They also wanted to improve signets but left plague signet horrible in terms of its passive they really kind screwed this one up.

@Shadowmoon.7986 said:Well, if it is not 100% apparent, the goal was a to remove the aoe prot and life steal sustain without pissing off the playerbase by selling the change as a straight buff, 100% PR BS. Now we have same long CDs, but no aoe prot and life steal option. The anet apologists can stop with the act.

It was bait-and-switch (BS) both for shades and wells. I knew shades would be nerfed in WvW and was willing to accept loss of VR with reduced base cool down and new WoD but the last hot fix pretty much deleted two grand master traits.

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Demonhead.7584 said:Vampiric Rituals was one of the few traits in BM line that made running wells worth the while.

Right ... no one isn't saying their isn't a trade off here or it doesn't impact players. The fact that Vampiric Rituals was one of the few traits in BM line that made running wells worth the while is exactly why this change had to happen .. BM has been pretty crap for many years and wells haven't exactly been a popular choice. If Anet is going to fix EITHER of these things, these are the kinds of changes that need to be made. It's nothing exceptional ... I've seen it happen to many classes over the years.

Frankly, I HATED the idea that I HAD to take that trait for wells to be worth using ... or that I had to take BM JUST for that trait if I wanted to run wells. Neither of those things feels good.

ZDragon hit the nail on the head> @"ZDragon.3046" said:

The issue with that is the reason people ran wells was because it was utility that provide protection and minor sustain via life leech effect.Both were removed with the loss of the trait making wells more or less just damage in most cases.

Anet was going to compensate by making them better to use with any build by reducing their cooldowns with the idea that they still wouldn't give protection or life leech.

I WANT to be able to run Wells, hence I said it was "worthwhile". It was the ONLY TRAIT that made running Wells functional in competitive and pve modes. I struggle to see how this is a buff, because there's nothing in the any trait line that rewards you for trying to play wells now. Virtually every Shroud Mode / Signet / Minion / Corruption type skill have some buff applicable from any given number of selectable traits. Wells now, do not.

Wells didn't make you invincible, and certainly didn't make you OP. If you got out-played by a Well playing necro, then you deserved. Wells are highly immobile, and you can kite around it (they don't last very long). And yes, I did read the patch notes. It's partially why I'm irked by this random, obscure change.

Update: They've now gone and increased the CD in WvW. Way to go Anet.

@Obtena.7952 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Demonhead.7584 said:Vampiric Rituals was one of the few traits in BM line that made running wells worth the while.

Agreed. The trait itself wasn’t even that good. For the trait to be useful it requires your Wells to hit all their targets so the life siphon can be high enough to do some actual sustain. In most cases you aren’t going to hit enough targets and for this reason it was underwhelming.

Protection is cool...I get that. But we have other protection sources...it’s a rather plentiful buff and it only lasted like 2 seconds per pulse? I don’t even remember since I almost never ever used the trait.

Anyway I’m glad it’s gone for something Waaaaay more useful. Only criticism I have is that I kinda wish it was a bit less of a selfish trait.

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:Agreed. The trait itself wasn’t even that good. For the trait to be useful it requires your Wells to hit all their targets so the life siphon can be high enough to do some actual sustain. In most cases you aren’t going to hit enough targets and for this reason it was underwhelming.

I'm unsure if you've played Reaper a lot, but the entire play-style of a Reaper is to get and stay close. I could happily duel and stand a fair chance against most melee and even some ranged classes because they inventivably have to get close to you to strike. Learning to place Wells for close-quarter combat is half the learning curve.

I'd also like to know how you sustain yourself past 100% HP in competitive modes, because that's the point in which you get a benefit from this GM. I'm honestly curious, because it's apparent I need to find a new build.

@Demonhead.7584 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:Agreed. The trait itself wasn’t even that good. For the trait to be useful it requires your Wells to hit all their targets so the life siphon can be high enough to do some actual sustain. In most cases you aren’t going to hit enough targets and for this reason it was underwhelming.

I main reaper and have mained reaper since it came out HoT. In Spvp, solo roaming WvW and Zerg play WvW for years

There are a lot of ways to play as a reaper. And really there is a lot we could technically talk about. But I’m gonna just cut straight to addressing your question of this:

I'd also like to know how you sustain yourself past 100% HP in competitive modes.

The way blood bank is supposed to work here is that you enter shroud on full hp, and every time you get a heal it is turned into a barrier instead. There are a variety of ways to heal while in shroud, but the easiest way is to just have players over-healing and it makes your reaper form last longer since your barrier is soaking up the damage rather than your shroud, thus you can sustain longer and do more damage and kill people.

For WvW it’s also pretty nice, although i don’t like dropping full on damage, if you need the sustain you have it right there...the overhealing in Zerg setting will guarantee that you will stay alive and be able to do work in a Zerg setting.

What this trait is not for is 1v1. It’s a trait that relies on allies to fuel its power so-to-speak

There’s probably more possibilities but I barely got a chance to touch the patch yet.

@"JusticeRetroHunter.7684" said:

I main reaper and have mained reaper since it came out HoT. In Spvp, solo roaming WvW and Zerg play WvW for years

Great! Another Reaper main like myself, we've been using it for similar purposes for a similar length of time. (Reaper since HoT too, 1.2k pvp and 2.5k WvW for transparency :D)

The way blood bank is supposed to work here is that you enter shroud on full hp, and every time you get a heal it is turned into a barrier instead. There are a variety of ways to heal while in shroud, but the easiest way is to just have players over-healing and it makes your reaper form last longer since your barrier is soaking up the damage rather than your shroud, thus you can sustain longer and do more damage and kill people.

That's the thing though - Overhealing is not easy on a Reaper, especially against classes that do burst damage (i.e. almost all heavy classes currently). Yes, there are a lot of options, but even using Blighters Boon, Unholy Sanctuary and Vampiric Presence/Banshee's Wail (for buff to Warhorn 5), the most I've been able to "overheal" myself with, is 200 - 270 points per second. Yes, although this is similar to the siphoning you'd get from wells previously, this (in long fights) does not equate for the following reasons:

• You cannot, and will not, be at full HP for the majority of the fight, and therefore the barrier that "soak up the damage" is not applicable for the long term. Where as with Wells, it will siphon and "soak up the damage" no matter your HP, consistently throughout the fight.

• Wells have, by their nature, a primary function of either buffing you, or the debuffing the enemy, and a secondary function to siphon HP had the previous trait been applied. This synergy is excellent for a Reaper with a Melee-orientated Shroud, because you want to boon rip (with WoC) as much as possible, and support your DPS by Well of Power, all while siphoning HP at a reasonable rate, as you will inevitably get within 600 range of your enemy using RShroud.

I know with certainty that my siphoning was mitigating more damage in fights, than the current barrier is doing for my Reaper at this moment solely based on available up time. It wasn't over powered, but it gave me a fair opportunity to fight back, and an edge if I caught the Spellbreaker or Rev unawares in a tight corner. In other words, if I played my Wells right, I was rewarded and if I misplaced them, I was heavily punished. Reaper over-healing in 1v1 requires direct contact at all times, otherwise you're not getting the heals. Wells gave you some room to move and maneuver. I'm sure you wouldn't disagree that mobility is key to a Necro's survival.

For WvW it’s also pretty nice, although i don’t like dropping full on damage, if you need the sustain you have it right there...the overhealing in Zerg setting will guarantee that you will stay alive and be able to do work in a Zerg setting.

What this trait is not for is 1v1. It’s a trait that relies on allies to fuel its power so-to-speakYou hit it spot on ^ . They removed a GM trait that had excellent playability for solo roaming and dueling, and replaced it with a lackluster trait that cannot function more than 80% of a fight, and can only serve greater a use for players running in a zerg. Ergo, imo, a bad decision of balance choice.

They could have lowered the HP siphoned, or decreased the rate at which it siphoned. Those would have been fair game. I also stand by what I said earlier, there is now no trait that buffs or encourages the use of Wells, where as every other skill type (Shroud, Corruption, Minion, Signet) has at least one trait that encourages its use.

Blood bank is a "win more" trait.If the fight is easy enough that you can reliably stay at full health then the barrier is unnecassary.If you are in a tough fight and struggling to survive, then you will never reach full health and never get the barrier, in which case the trait does nothing for you.

The trait should at least grant barrier to over-healed allies as well, then it might be useful.

If they want to make Blood Bank worth it, then it needs to affect allies, too, like Vampiric Rituals did. Bringing overhealing-as-barrier to group and competitive content for the entire party/subgroup would be a game changer.

Yep, I dislike this change as well and have said as much.

For me the Siphon wasn't the major issue, it's the 5sec protection per well that was the biggest loss to me.Every Necro I have running wells was using Vampuric rituals for that protection, it was key to multiple builds to help me solo certain content and now those builds are effectively dead and useless now and will have to be changed.

@Demonhead.7584 said:

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:Agreed. The trait itself wasn’t even that good. For the trait to be useful it requires your Wells to hit all their targets so the life siphon can be high enough to do some actual sustain. In most cases you aren’t going to hit enough targets and for this reason it was underwhelming.

Even though this is true, it doesn't change the fact that the Wells trait was badly implemented and badly placed as well. Let's hope Anet's renewed interested in adjusting wells translates to them be more widely applicable WITHOUT having to lean on a GM trait to do so.

I'd also like to know how you sustain yourself past 100% HP in competitive modes, because that's the point in which you get a benefit from this GM. I'm honestly curious, because it's apparent I need to find a new build.

To be honest, I believe the trait is largely trash for competitive modes where overhealing is unlikely. I DO see it has some effectiveness in PVE team settings ... but that's an assessment in a bubble. As long as it's tied to the current iteration of BM, it's use will likely be minimal.

Anet fails in many of their class changes, because they fix a single trait ... but players have to choose the whole line. The approach assumes the remainder of the line is 'good' but changes like this need to consider the WHOLE line, not just one trait at a time. To be fair, if Vampiric effects were better, this trait might be good ... but they aren't ... it's sad that Soul Eater is a BETTER heal than BOTH the life drain traits from BM stacked. That's a serious deficiency in the design.

@JusticeRetroHunter.7684 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@"Demonhead.7584" said:Vampiric Rituals was one of the few traits in BM line that made running wells worth the while.

Dont get me wrong i would widely accept the idea that we are making wells better to use without feeling like you need the trait to use them.I would be glad if they did this for staff to by making some base life force gen on the marks a baseline thing so dont feel tied to soul marks trait for example.

But when you do that and say you are going to compensate by making the skills better in some way (in this case) it was lowering the base cooldown and leaving off other mechanics that alone was acceptable enough. But then you move the cooldowns back up so that most of the wells actually just saw a loss mechanically. They could have just left the cooldown changes out of the patch notes instead of teasing everyone with the idea that was going to make it "acceptable".

This is also the second time anet has done this as noted they did it before with spectral skills too and in the case of those skills not all of them were improved at baseline when the trait to boost them was removed (spectral armor) we then later saw a cooldown increase to those skills in competitive modes including spectral armor even though it never got any base improvements to start with.

I dont want QoL that comes with low key side nerfs a patch or hotfix later that borderline makes the skills about as effective as they were as if you just didnt take traits for them before their tied traits were removed from the game.

Every QoL change for necro should not be following this pattern. But its twice now they have done it and it really rubs me the wrong way at least in competitive modes. These are just my personal feelings and they might not apply to everyone and you dont have to agree with them of course im just putting it out there though.

@"Demonhead.7584" said:Vampiric Rituals was one of the few traits in BM line that made running wells worth the while. The life siphoning meant that you could sustain in fights against perma-stun Soulbeasts and spellbreakers. You didn't need the barrier to help you counter the explosive damage received when fighting against other professions. Giving me barrier after I've healed "beyond my maximum health" is extremely redundant for me as a Reaper, as I'm almost always at about 75 - 90% HP.

The decrease in recharge time for wells certainly doesn't compensate for the loss of life siphoning, nor does giving me barrier. They mentioned they wanted a more general use out of this trait, but instead they've completely stripped away any decent functionality of said trait, and there's hardly any connection to wells in it's entirety.

It feels like an ANET staff got beaten in WvW or PvP with a build that used a lot of well siphoning and got upset over it.

Necro can never be at its full health because of all of the self bleeding and all kind of sshitThis balance was a total scum. They thought we are idiotsWe know what they were about to do even before they did itI wasn’t excited when i saw the news about the balanceEven not excited about the scourge shade change.

I really don’t know what they want and what’s their plan for the necros.

I suggest that they should create the meta for the necros so we can exactly know what’s their vision for the necromancers

How comes the core more valuable than both reaper and scourge I can’t understand.

I said this before. Their only reason to let the necros exist is to let the other classes feel good about their selves in all game modes

@"ZDragon.3046" said:Dont get me wrong i would widely accept the idea that we are making wells better to use without feeling like you need the trait to use them.I would be glad if they did this for staff to by making some base life force gen on the marks a baseline thing so dont feel tied to soul marks trait for example.

But when you do that and say you are going to compensate by making the skills better in some way (in this case) it was lowering the base cooldown and leaving off other mechanics that alone was acceptable enough. But then you move the cooldowns back up so that most of the wells actually just saw a loss mechanically. They could have just left the cooldown changes out of the patch notes instead of teasing everyone with the idea that was going to make it "acceptable".

Ya I made my comment before they made that hot fix. We have CMC to thank for the reversal of a change that was actually okay, compensating we’ll cooldown a for the removal of the trait was fair.

but now, it’s basically a nerf to wells. I don’t use wells but that nerf was really just...non sensical.

I used the trait too and it was pretty good.

@"Justine.6351" said:I used the trait too and it was pretty good.

No it's not, which leads me to believe you probably didn't. Here were discussing this red herring instead of "why did Necro receive 15 nerfs this patch?"...