Health Sacrifice and an Idea on how to implement it.

A while back someone posted on my Necromancer's Depth post about how to do health sacrifice and that got me thinking about how to implement that into the system. I personally don't see a problem with raw numbers chipping into your total health and think it could be interesting. It worked well in GW1, and in other games that don't have reliable healers from allies so the concept can work here too. There isn't a real reason it can't. However, I think I've thought of a solution that might work. Shout outs to that person who Suggested something similar. I can't find your post atm, but if it was you please say so.

The Idea was to have it be something you pay for over time. Almost like how damage works in Earth bound where you could get hit for an attack that strikes you for more than your current health but you could out heal the damage before you died. This mechanic was rather dynamic for a RPG and one I respect quite a bit. So I thought about that in terms of the necromancer and it seems something similar could occur with Necromancer. It would make it more difficult for healers to heal the damage the necromancer is taking, however it does mean that these abilities could be more powerful and more balanced working with this concept.

How I feel it should work is a sort of reverse of Barrier. Where as Barrier gives temporary health Sacrifice skills would cause a debt to be payed for in health after a second or two of using the skills. The Debt could be staggered much like barrier but have a limit as to how much health you could sacrifice at any given time. My thoughts being the same as barrier in Half your total life. Once you've reached your Debt cap your sacrifice skills would be disabled until the debt is payed in full. And it would eat into your health at the same rate that barrier degenerates. This could create an interesting dynamic with these skills were you burst a bunch of sacrifice skills, begin to lose health and sacrifice more, staggering the life loss for a second to maintain DPS output before the toll is taken. Beyond just that though, the price can not be negated by Shroud or barrier. To add to that, You could sacrifice more life than you currently have if you are below half health. Giving you a potential last gasp before being taken down.

But what do you guys think? Is this the correct way to do it? how would you use this sort of mechanic?

The other proposal if I remember correctly was an inverse barrier: pay for skill by sacrificing an immediate amount of health and after a short delay regain that health over time.

This suggestion is a bit different: pay for skill by sacrificing an amount of health over time.

Part of the problem we have heard from the developers regarding sacrifice mechanics is the ability to easily counter their drawbacks by receiving healing from other players. Suggesting a sacrifice mechanic likely requires addressing this problem, meaning the sacrificed health would need some mechanism whereby it could not be readily healed back by an ally.

In either case, I think a mechanism whereby maximum health is also temporarily decreased by the sacrificed amount is in order. The original suggestion already has a built in return of health suggestion that may make implementation easier, but either could work.

You could also mix the two: pay for skill by immediately sacrificing health and decreasing your maximum available health by the same amount, maximum available health is restored over time but requires actual healing to refill.

Regardless, I like the potential this mechanism could have for an offensive Deep Wounds mechanic too.

@Allarius.5670 said:The other proposal if I remember correctly was an inverse barrier: pay for skill by sacrificing an immediate amount of health and after a short delay regain that health over time.

This suggestion is a bit different: pay for skill by sacrificing an amount of health over time.

Part of the problem we have heard from the developers regarding sacrifice mechanics is the ability to easily counter their drawbacks by receiving healing from other players. Suggesting a sacrifice mechanic likely requires addressing this problem, meaning the sacrificed health would need some mechanism whereby it could not be readily healed back by an ally.

In either case, I think a mechanism whereby maximum health is also temporarily decreased by the sacrificed amount is in order. The original suggestion already has a built in return of health suggestion that may make implementation easier, but either could work.

You could also mix the two: pay for skill by immediately sacrificing health and decreasing your maximum available health by the same amount, maximum available health is restored over time but requires actual healing to refill.

Regardless, I like the potential this mechanism could have for an offensive Deep Wounds mechanic too.

Very True. Its interesting to me that we could have a type of build that requires you to pay for it but you can't spend the life if you are at the cap. I like this sort of Debt to the Deathless play style. Sort of a dark pact. "Yes you can have power. But the Debt must be payed, even if you can't pay it now." Giving you time to combat it. But as a side, the healing you could receive while its active could be cut as well. I really want to have this play style and its a disservice to the fans not to figure out a way to implement it.

It seems like sacrificing health would be more difficult to balance than sacrificing LF.

Before going down the health route, consider alternates like Scourge's example, Warrior's multipliers based on adrenaline, and other ways to use LF. I remember well being first to go down and having half the health when downed so sacrificing health waves a caution flag for me.

Necromancer is finely tuned in terms of health and LF vs profession vulnerabilities. Too radical a change might cause a number of problems.

@Anchoku.8142 said:It seems like sacrificing health would be more difficult to balance than sacrificing LF.

Before going down the health route, consider alternates like Scourge's example, Warrior's multipliers based on adrenaline, and other ways to use LF. I remember well being first to go down and having half the health when downed so sacrificing health waves a caution flag for me.

Necromancer is finely tuned in terms of health and LF vs profession vulnerabilities. Too radical a change might cause a number of problems.

Perhaps, but its worth the risk in my opinion. I also must point out that health sacrifice already exists in the game. Both through Corruption skills and through the Overheat mechanic on Holosmith. Although it isn't called that, it is similar enough I feel and would cause the same problems. The major difference is just how they pay for that cost. For Corruptions their balance already isn't very good. You have skills like Blood is Power were the price of use is way beyond the benefit you gain while Plagueland's price is well below its benefit. Health Sacrifice tends to tax healers quite a bit, they did in GW1. And It could still be a matter of skill in use rather than relying on healers the entire time since healers could try to keep healing you. Add to that if lets say anet does decide to finally give utility in shroud the health sacrifice couldn't be healed while in shroud. And in my personal opinion shroud would be the optimal place to activate such a skill.

@Anchoku.8142 said:It seems like sacrificing health would be more difficult to balance than sacrificing LF.

Before going down the health route, consider alternates like Scourge's example, Warrior's multipliers based on adrenaline, and other ways to use LF. I remember well being first to go down and having half the health when downed so sacrificing health waves a caution flag for me.

Necromancer is finely tuned in terms of health and LF vs profession vulnerabilities. Too radical a change might cause a number of problems.

I generally agree with this and feel as though Life force was meant to be reminiscent of sacrifice mechanics in a different form, particularly considering Shroud is so often referred to as a second health pool.

I suppose some potential benefits to even considering health sacrifice is an increase in complexity (as an additional resource beyond cooldowns and life force) and depth (interesting choices between health as buffer to downed state and as a resource, paralleling the similar choice with life force and shroud in a different way) to expand accessible playstyles of the profession.

Messing with health directly as a resource can help justify mechanics traditionally forbidden to the profession because of its naturally high health pool and potential health pool buffer via shroud. Active defense and excellent support healing are two things that readily come to mind.

@Allarius.5670 said:

@Anchoku.8142 said:It seems like sacrificing health would be more difficult to balance than sacrificing LF.

Before going down the health route, consider alternates like Scourge's example, Warrior's multipliers based on adrenaline, and other ways to use LF. I remember well being first to go down and having half the health when downed so sacrificing health waves a caution flag for me.

Necromancer is finely tuned in terms of health and LF vs profession vulnerabilities. Too radical a change might cause a number of problems.

I play quite a bit of Magic: The gathering and my second favorite color is Black. Something I always liked about it is that Black has great abilities it otherwise wouldn't have access to but now can because it sacrifices something for it. Power at any cost. Which I love about it. Necromancer in GW1 had this flavor to it too and does to some extent in GW2, though I'd like to see more of it.

Necromancers are not allowed to have synergy with other classes, healing specs in this case. That's what devs said. That's why we can't have sacrifice skills like these you are suggesting.

@vicious.5683 said:Necromancers are not allowed to have synergy with other classes, healing specs in this case. That's what devs said. That's why we can't have sacrifice skills like these you are suggesting.

That logic doesn't make any sense to me.

Something that might chill a bit this thread is that anet have a very different definition of what seem to be rewarding and what we understand as rewarding. It's obvious that corruption skills that hurt us rarely feel rewarding, after all we damage ourself yet, the effects of the skills are still pretty even with skills that other professions have. Health sacrifice, if something like that happen, might really end up being the same.

I'd rather see skills that cut off a part of our vitality when we equip them than see another kind of sacrifice skill that end up with average effect despite the "sacrifice". At least, the cost would be clear: less life and thus less defense via the shroud (if ther is another shroud that come along).

It makes no sense that a Deep wound mechanic can't exist, when you consider the traits and effects can affect secondary stats on the fly. If it because the engine can't handle negative modifiers (which could be true), theres still the option to pass it through a fractional coefficient just before HP total is calculated. IE: -10% HP = 0.9 coefficient.

I think they're bigger fear is implementing anything that justifies a larger power budget, because players are adept at cheesing mechanics. After all...... the first 2 and a half years of the meta was Glass cannons. But then again.... POF's balance is a total mess, with some classes (I'm looking at you Firebrand) being painfully OP, even before min/maxers figured out all the loop holes.

Reading the OP's idea and the thought of a reverse barrier mechanic made me think of the gw1 days where mesmers would cause health degeneration until the effect ended and then would restore health back to the target, then there's the Deep Wound mechanic that was brought up a few times where it would chop your health effectively lowering your total HP. It got me thinking, what about the same idea as Deep Wound mechanic where the sacrifice lowers your vitality, grays out your health based on the cost of the ability, and it could only be healed by a new mechanic, spend your saved life force to regain your vitality.

Just for visual sake - could have a max amount of life force blips like a warrior's adrenaline bar, say 9 max because kitten. A profession ability could be one that consumes one of those blips and restores your vit or removes a stack of sacrifice debuff.

If you mean reverse barrier idea in your thread, it's probably my suggestion.

Your implementation is similar to mine, but I wanted to take it a bit further with the mechanic, with ability (either via profession mechanic or the elite) to share the reverse barrier to chosen singular enemies, lowering their health as well. Similar to deep wound from gw1.

@Lily.1935 said:

@Allarius.5670 said:

@Anchoku.8142 said:It seems like sacrificing health would be more difficult to balance than sacrificing LF.

Before going down the health route, consider alternates like Scourge's example, Warrior's multipliers based on adrenaline, and other ways to use LF. I remember well being first to go down and having half the health when downed so sacrificing health waves a caution flag for me.

Necromancer is finely tuned in terms of health and LF vs profession vulnerabilities. Too radical a change might cause a number of problems.

That makes me think of something i was fantasizing about for a rpg:Using Your own blood to cast spells and maybe sacrificing health to summon more powerful minions and or use it to fuel powerful spells like a upgraded version of a spell your using.

How about another F2 skills that will consume our health like shroud does to life force. The effect would be to increase our damage to 30-50% and all forms of healing are disabled internally or externally. Since we are considered a selfish class (core and reaper) why not stand for it and boost our self more to be competent with other dps class.

What gets me with ANet's response on health sacrifice is that we had healers in GW1 as well, yet health sacrifice worked quite well there. Heck, the average Monk's best friend was a Necro who kept sacrificing a full third of their max health every few seconds! But this was definitely not without risk. If someone else needed strong healing, the Monk very likely would have to choose between healing the Necro that's killing themselves or healing their other teammate who is being killed by enemies.

I don't really understand why it wouldn't work in Gw2 as well.

Some kind of a bloodmage was always what I had in mind when I chosed the traitline bloodmagic but shortly after I remember why a bloodmage doesn´t work.No skills that enhance you for sacrificing a specific amount of health, corruption-skills don´t count.

Furthermore necromancer has no sustainable healing-options, despite healing through conditiondamage but that implies that you use conditions as your main damage source. We have to trade damage for healing-power which increases our healing by a pitifull amount whilst losing a huge chunk of damage.

Until Anet doesn´t implement proper sustained healing, sacrificing health to empower will be impossible.Oh, I´ve found a name for these kind of skills if Anet will ever create them, obvious though but impressive: sacrifice-skills.^^