Does Blood Bank seem weak as a GM trait?

"Blood Bank: This new trait replaces Vampiric Rituals in the Blood Magic grandmaster slot. It causes healing over your maximum health amount to be converted into barrier. Regeneration effects do not trigger this trait."

A very temporary max health increase for those times when your siphons are capped.

Thoughts?

Absolutely useless in pve.Very niche in wvw.Spvp don't know, might see some experimentation with a dedicated healer.

It feels like this change got introduced because they did need a nerf for well trait in spvp but they didn't know how to change it, so they made it a completely useless trait

It is a neat idea but I had hoped the over-heal barriers would extend to allies. I have no idea why Necromancer, of all professions, would need temp hit points. When I first read the patch preview, I expected a group support trait to bring limited, minor barrier sharing to core and Reaper.

We Scrapper now, boys!

The only way to describe this trait imo is to say there's garbage, and then there's the gross sludgey water runoff that leaks out of garbage trucks. It is the sludgey runoff. Like this trait is only useful if you're playing ultra sustain bunker builds, and even then the other 2 traits are infinitely better. On top of that barrier only lasts for 5 seconds. The piece that makes it extra garbage is that Regeneration doesn't even trigger the effect.

This trait isn't even worth your time, and is one of the worst GM traits in the game...

Weak is an understatement. This shouldn't even exist, it literally changes nothing. Even every single minor trait in the game is more useful.There's no way to make this trait useful and it has no synergy with any other traits or skills or even stats. Why the heck would you use blood bank? you're already never going to get one shotted with so much health to begin with, so there's really no point unless scholar runes are getting buffed by 9000% and boneskinner becomes the only boss in the game.

One possible use is when playing support-Scourge and you need even moar barrier for some reason. "Heal me extra hard, Druid!"

yea vampiric rituals got shafted and this trait sucks. they took out one of the best life etals in the game with vamp rituals and then dropped in this hot garbage. there's not enough vampiric anything to make this worth it.

did you guys even try it? it's great on reaper - 100% of incoming healing becomes barrier. it's pretty good in WVW though i think weaker than the death magic GM for mitigation.

if it also converted 5-10% of incoming healing to life force it would be solid good.

This literally massacred my wells build I have been using for years. the protection it gave my team was invaluable and I really hate scourge... not a happy camper >_<

Absolute total garbage for this trait. I do not usually comment often but some dev ought to be fired or demoted for this.

@Anchoku.8142 said:It is a neat idea but I had hoped the over-heal barriers would extend to allies. I have no idea why Necromancer, of all professions, would need temp hit points. When I first read the patch preview, I expected a group support trait to bring limited, minor barrier sharing to core and Reaper.

Exactly! This have to be a 5 target. Group support is the bare minimum. Enough with the selfish necro concept... sick of it. It's just pointless, useless and not fun :(

@"Anchoku.8142" said:"Blood Bank: This new trait replaces Vampiric Rituals in the Blood Magic grandmaster slot. It causes healing over your maximum health amount to be converted into barrier. Regeneration effects do not trigger this trait."

A very temporary max health increase for those times when your siphons are capped.

Thoughts?The idea is good, allows the necro somehow counterplay the lack of stability and mobility against heavy CC classes as it can have always that cushion of extra hit points without giving the necro speed or stab.

Main players only need to find how to create synergies with the trait.

It's not "weak", on the paper it's a pretty good trait, the issue is that in practice it's not gonna be of much help whether you have it or not.

I'd rather have a trait that "grant barrier based on the life force gained from weapon skills" than something with the obnoxious "at max health" limitation. It would at least help in timing the barrier for when you need it instead of gaining barrier if you somehow end up overhealing (in other word when you don't need it and with poor control over it).

@Nimon.7840 said:Absolutely useless in pve.Very niche in wvw.Spvp don't know, might see some experimentation with a dedicated healer.

It feels like this change got introduced because they did need a nerf for well trait in spvp but they didn't know how to change it, so they made it a completely useless trait

Never trust them when it comes to necros

And crack head will say change y’all whole stats to get the full benefit out of this bb hot trash canSo you need to spend more than 50 gold minimum to test this just so if it works well they will nerf it or if doesn’t work you will have to change the gearss stats all over again

My scourge-minion master-support/sustainable tank build relied on the protection from the wells trait. There was a synergy there that was powerful for pve group content. With the quick recharge of wells, and the barrier from my sand shade I was able to cloak allies with barrier and protection for some noticeable damage mitigation. I mean - maybe that was too powerful?But what they replaced it with is superfluous to such a degree as to be utterly useless. I've fiddled with the build but all I've really noticed is that nothing really synergizes with wells. If they tweaked it so that the extra barrier was also shared with allies, that COULD be something of merit!

Seems to be a decent amount of well builds that relied on that protection from VR.. I had 2 myself which are no good now.

I havent been this disappointed with a skill/trait change since Anet ruined Ranger Spirits a while back.They still havent made it so Spirits with offensive abilities teleport to target rather than player.. useless to range play.

The change to Vampyric Rituals may have only been done to nerf wells in WvW. Blood Bank is not a "bank" but rather a pay day loan. If you need it, you probably have a much bigger issue.

The lack of group support is the most frustrating aspect. The mechanic is interesting and extending barrier to core and Reaper is welcome but taking it means a dps loss with no team benefit. Staying out of shroud as much as possible is not good for core or Reaper damage output.

If it modified Vampyric Presence to provide barrier from excess siphons and healing, I think that would be good.

If it converted excess healing to life force, that qould be good, too.

isn't something like this worth exploring for WvW?http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSwAsiZlRg9wiYmYJN59qA-zVJYmRH/JYyB-w

I mean with blood bank there could be a reason to actually use blood traitline over others. The point of that trait is to get as many healing sources as possible.Also Do heal foods trigger the trait? And Runes?Rune of tormenting? Sigil of water? sigil of blood?

@"anduriell.6280" said:isn't something like this worth exploring for WvW?http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSwAsiZlRg9wiYmYJN59qA-zVJYmRH/JYyB-w

I mean with blood bank there could be a reason to actually use blood traitline over others. The point of that trait is to get as many healing sources as possible.Also Do heal foods trigger the trait? And Runes?

If you already have full health and if you or allies expect incoming damage and decide to burn a heal before you need it, then it triggers and gives a barrier, which disappears after 2 seconds.

For that largely unnecessary and speculative benefit, you give up Unholy Martyr, which consumes allies conditions for LF, or Transfusion, which pumps out significant group healing when siphoning with shroud 4.

As it is, Blood Bank might as well be an empty slot.

@"Anchoku.8142" said:The change to Vampyric Rituals may have only been done to nerf wells in WvW. Blood Bank is not a "bank" but rather a pay day loan. If you need it, you probably have a much bigger issue.

Well no one was playing that traitline in wvw.I think it was more a spvp nerf.

The lack of group support is the most frustrating aspect. The mechanic is interesting and extending barrier to core and Reaper is welcome but taking it means a dps loss with no team benefit. Staying out of shroud as much as possible is not good for core or Reaper damage output.

If it modified Vampyric Presence to provide barrier from excess siphons and healing, I think that would be good.

If it converted excess healing to life force, that qould be good, too.

It's definitely deficient. It's problem is that it's 100% completely dependent on other effects to do anything ... so gauging it's effectiveness is completely impossible.

The whole blood magic line is pretty lack luster, tbh (life siphon feels weak, dagger is weak). Obtena is always championing thematic design choices... but Anet always fails in this regard. GW2 might have the least necro-y necro of any MMO ever. I actually wish they did do more thematic design and start making necros feel like necros!!!

Also, I miss 7 second shroud cooldown and slower life force drain. :disappointed:

@Anchoku.8142 said:

@"anduriell.6280" said:isn't something like this worth exploring for WvW?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSwAsiZlRg9wiYmYJN59qA-zVJYmRH/JYyB-w

I mean with blood bank there could be a reason to actually use blood traitline over others. The point of that trait is to get as many healing sources as possible.Also

Do heal foods trigger the trait? And Runes?

Barrier lasts 5 seconds, not 2, but otherwise, this is spot-on. At best this trait is a "open with Life Siphon on dagger as you close in to melee range" trait. No other play pattern makes sense in practice, and that is supremely weak for a grandmaster trait.

I believe we should have a DPS option in Blood. Maybe the health siphon doing additional damage would be cool?