REWORK LIFESTEAL

[Kuulpb.5412]

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:Lifesteal is in absolutely no way underwhelming in this game..

If you play even a slightly durable minion master with blood magic traitline you would know that lifesteal is amazing.

If they changed it to benefit from power and crits like you suggested it would literally make one of my favorite builds unkillable.

If they made lifesteal more powerful like that you'd have Necro MM's AFK farming world bosses and tons of other group events as the minion lifesteal would easily be enough to outheal many of those more powerful creatures.

one main issue I have is: Things seem to basically "require" other things to even function normally, lifesteal as it is now, is more "50-100 healing a hit" which is Almost nothing when you consider necromancers have 20-30,000 health and very low armour, so healing already has a lower "effect" on necromancers as Healing benefits from toughness over vitality.

the build you mention I assume is a Blood magic and Death magic thing, but as death magic outside of some general use PvE builds is REALLY bad it doesn't really mean much if you're "unkillable" when you do very low damage, Minions don't benefit from your power etc at all and for you to get any noticeable healing from it you need healing power or to hit lots of things fast: reworking lifesteal would mean reworking traits too, so the "unkillable" build wouldn't be unkillable since it'd be tweaked from a balance standpoint, although having said that necromancers need something they excel in because they have nothing atm, Healing is druid, condition is Mirage, tankinees is spellbreaker, Power is basically anything.

Blood, Death, Reaper yes, used to use Soul Reaping pre HoT.Designed largely around maximizing minions and heal sustain.. it's very hard to kill in PvE and prior to minion changes and the addition of Elite specs it was really hard to kill in PvP too pre HoT.I don't actually use Healing power (except the 150 I get from Last rites).. I use Soldier stats so my damage isn't as terrible as you might expect neither is the incoming healing.In many fights I can maintain around 10-11 minions sometimes 12 depending on what i'm running and how many enemies are around and that does add up both in damage and in incoming life steal.Sure I'm not going to win any DPS awards or anything but it's good enough to go toe to toe with just about anything solo.

Adding to that I have access to regen on dodge (Lesser Mark of Blood) and protection when leaving shroud (Beyond the Veil)Sometimes I use Death Nova for more minions = more lifesteal + more damage and tons of poisonfields when they die :D or Corrupter's Fervor for more toughness.I get more toughness per minion with Flesh of the Master amd More damage from minions and they take conditions with Necromantic Corruption.Minion and Player Lifesteal with Vampiric and Vampiric Pressence as well as stopping ally bleedout and being able to pull rez them in shroud.

Then in Reaper line I have lifesteal on shout + reduced cooldown for Rise per target, 15% damage increase to chilled foes which is easy to exploit with focus 5, Reaper Shroud and GS auto and lastly I get 300 ferocity and quickness while in shroud which goes really nicely with Decimate Defences 2% crit chance per stack of Vulnerability on foes allowing me to get 50% crit chance without needing any precision stat in the build at all.I can get more ferocity and power from food etc too if I want extra damage as well as more crits from Superior Sigil of Preception(25 stacks combined with 25 stacks of Vulnerability = 66.90% Crit chance without a single investment in precision)

Contributing to the healing factor as well I have constant health regen from Superior Rune of the Dolyak and I AoE heal on crits with Superior Sigil of Water.

So as you can see I have a lot of constant incoming healing from multiple sources mostly life steal from on average 10ish minions. (can also get more from food)Likewise multiple pockets of damage being done by myself, minions and poison fields caused by their death which are numerous thanks to timegated minions I get when I kill stuff and the minions summoned with Rise.I can get almost 70% crit chance without precision (which is ridiculous)My stats bounce around 2,382 Power + 2,340-2,500 Toughness depending on how many minions I have (2660 in shroud) which gives me a max Armor rating of 3,307- 3,500 (3600+ in shroud) Not so "very low" after all is it :PCombine that with 29,812 base Hp (30K + with food) and 20,571 Life force and you can see what I mean when I say lifesteal is already capable of making you nearly unkillable as it is without needing to completely sacrifice your damage.

Functions great as a solo build and benefits from a moderate damage buff when playing with others thanks to 25 vulnerability and perma chill being extremely easy to maintan with a small group.Dagger 2 even functions as a main healing skill thanks to it's bigger heal and 6 second shorter cooldown than sacrificing the Blood Fiend.

I highly recommend giving it a try sometime if you like the power tank playstyle, more than happy to give you the exact build I use, all traits, gear etc.It's never going to be best DPS meta or anything but it's still very capable, definitely the kind of build you use to help people out when they get in over their heads which is a fun pastime for me.Oh yeah the Shroud skill 4 does AoE healing too, I've managed to get upwards of 6K AoE healing on it in some situations (around 4-5K normally) which is a nice boon for fractals and stuff, I've saved a lot of people with this build over the years not to mention being the main reason my fractal pug group hasn't wiped multiple times in the same encounter ^^

It is very low since you're ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability.

I'm not though.As I said it's main stat is power not toughness and despite no stat investment I can still hit 70% crit chance quite often.That's why I call it a Power Tank not just a Tank.

You'll just have to try it yourself to understand, it's by far the best build I've used that you could call a highly proficient Jack of all trades.It could be more tanky, it could be more dps focused, could be more healing focused but it sits nicely in the middle being respectably competent at all 3.I've attempted to make similar builds on other classes but they simply cannot replicate the same level of tankyness while possessing the same level of damage output and sustain, that's mainly where the minions and lifesteal come in and Necro is the only class that can use summons to that effect.There are ways to make other classes play Jack of all trade playstyles but they cannot compete with the Necromancer on that front.. not even remotely close.

Two of your stats are defensive, meaning the MAJORITY of you stats are defensive. that makes it Defensive.

Defensive yes but that's not what you said.You said i'm "ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability." and that's not true.

I may only be using 3 defined stats on my gear.. Power(Main), Toughness and Vitality but my traits and skills give me the ability to function as a character that's utalizing 4 different stats at high investment, therefore i'm not entirely specced for toughness/survivability.The 69.90% Crit chance I can get upto through the combination of my Sigil stacks and the enemies applied Vulnerability (which like I said is almost constantly 25 in any group based content) effectively means that my build can operate with more base crit chance than a character running a full set of Bezerker gear without me needing to put a single point into the precision stat on any of my weapons, trinkets or armour.

My Ranger in full bezerker gear has 2,145 precision giving him a base total of 59,52% Crit chance.. that's 10.38% crit chance lower than what my Necromancer can get without any gear precision stat investment at all.Granted the Ranger can self apply Fury and Might and my Necro build can't but it can get that from allies easily and often.The difference comes down to Ferocity and that's the only real weak point of the build, high crit chance but low ferocity crit damage.

It's still enough to make a noticable difference when I am operating at my peak though.High crit chance and raw power combined with high toughness and health.. and add to that a significant amount of constant incoming healing.No other class in Gw2 can function like that.. i've tried to replicate it in various ways on most classes but none of them can gain the same level of tank, damage and sustain at the same time.. Necro is the only class capable of it thanks to it's unique traits and skills.

The way the build works essentially means I am more or less running the exclusively PVP Paladin stat set in PvE and WvW.Power, Precision Main - Toughness, Vitality minor..Only i'm doing it with higher stats than the Paladin stats can provide.

Paladin Amulet + Superior Rune of Dolyak2050 Power2050 Precision (55.00% Crit chance, easily caps 100% crit chance with Vulnerability)1860 Toughness1660 Vitality (25,812 health, 17,811 Life Force)

My PvE Build + Superior Rune of Dolyak2381 Power1000 base precision (5% crit chance) +250 Precision Sigil (19,90% Crit chance) + Decimate defences Vulnerability (69,90% Crit chance)2261 Toughness2061 Vitality (29,822 health, 20,578 life force)

2 Primary stats are defensive yes but with maxed sigil and Decimate Defenses taking advantage of 25 Vulnerability it technically remains as offensive as it is defensive since when my crit chance is at 69,90% i'm effectively functioning as if my precision stat is 2384 which is higher than my base toughness, vitality and power.Factor in additional Toughness from traits though my two main stats are typically Power and Toughness.. but when operating at my peak they are Toughness and Precision.So either way my two highest stats at any one time are one offensive and one defensive, so I cannot be as you said "ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability" when the offensive capabilities of the build are equally present.If anything at best combining Power/Precision against Toughness/Vitality i'm technically more offenisve than defensive stat wise.

did you try mirage, or revenant of any kind with a mace, with runes of tormenting? that heals as much as lifesteal and you proc it every hit

[Teratus.2859]

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:Lifesteal is in absolutely no way underwhelming in this game..

If you play even a slightly durable minion master with blood magic traitline you would know that lifesteal is amazing.

If they changed it to benefit from power and crits like you suggested it would literally make one of my favorite builds unkillable.

If they made lifesteal more powerful like that you'd have Necro MM's AFK farming world bosses and tons of other group events as the minion lifesteal would easily be enough to outheal many of those more powerful creatures.

one main issue I have is: Things seem to basically "require" other things to even function normally, lifesteal as it is now, is more "50-100 healing a hit" which is Almost nothing when you consider necromancers have 20-30,000 health and very low armour, so healing already has a lower "effect" on necromancers as Healing benefits from toughness over vitality.

the build you mention I assume is a Blood magic and Death magic thing, but as death magic outside of some general use PvE builds is REALLY bad it doesn't really mean much if you're "unkillable" when you do very low damage, Minions don't benefit from your power etc at all and for you to get any noticeable healing from it you need healing power or to hit lots of things fast: reworking lifesteal would mean reworking traits too, so the "unkillable" build wouldn't be unkillable since it'd be tweaked from a balance standpoint, although having said that necromancers need something they excel in because they have nothing atm, Healing is druid, condition is Mirage, tankinees is spellbreaker, Power is basically anything.

Blood, Death, Reaper yes, used to use Soul Reaping pre HoT.Designed largely around maximizing minions and heal sustain.. it's very hard to kill in PvE and prior to minion changes and the addition of Elite specs it was really hard to kill in PvP too pre HoT.I don't actually use Healing power (except the 150 I get from Last rites).. I use Soldier stats so my damage isn't as terrible as you might expect neither is the incoming healing.In many fights I can maintain around 10-11 minions sometimes 12 depending on what i'm running and how many enemies are around and that does add up both in damage and in incoming life steal.Sure I'm not going to win any DPS awards or anything but it's good enough to go toe to toe with just about anything solo.

Adding to that I have access to regen on dodge (Lesser Mark of Blood) and protection when leaving shroud (Beyond the Veil)Sometimes I use Death Nova for more minions = more lifesteal + more damage and tons of poisonfields when they die :D or Corrupter's Fervor for more toughness.I get more toughness per minion with Flesh of the Master amd More damage from minions and they take conditions with Necromantic Corruption.Minion and Player Lifesteal with Vampiric and Vampiric Pressence as well as stopping ally bleedout and being able to pull rez them in shroud.

Then in Reaper line I have lifesteal on shout + reduced cooldown for Rise per target, 15% damage increase to chilled foes which is easy to exploit with focus 5, Reaper Shroud and GS auto and lastly I get 300 ferocity and quickness while in shroud which goes really nicely with Decimate Defences 2% crit chance per stack of Vulnerability on foes allowing me to get 50% crit chance without needing any precision stat in the build at all.I can get more ferocity and power from food etc too if I want extra damage as well as more crits from Superior Sigil of Preception(25 stacks combined with 25 stacks of Vulnerability = 66.90% Crit chance without a single investment in precision)

Contributing to the healing factor as well I have constant health regen from Superior Rune of the Dolyak and I AoE heal on crits with Superior Sigil of Water.

So as you can see I have a lot of constant incoming healing from multiple sources mostly life steal from on average 10ish minions. (can also get more from food)Likewise multiple pockets of damage being done by myself, minions and poison fields caused by their death which are numerous thanks to timegated minions I get when I kill stuff and the minions summoned with Rise.I can get almost 70% crit chance without precision (which is ridiculous)My stats bounce around 2,382 Power + 2,340-2,500 Toughness depending on how many minions I have (2660 in shroud) which gives me a max Armor rating of 3,307- 3,500 (3600+ in shroud) Not so "very low" after all is it :PCombine that with 29,812 base Hp (30K + with food) and 20,571 Life force and you can see what I mean when I say lifesteal is already capable of making you nearly unkillable as it is without needing to completely sacrifice your damage.

Functions great as a solo build and benefits from a moderate damage buff when playing with others thanks to 25 vulnerability and perma chill being extremely easy to maintan with a small group.Dagger 2 even functions as a main healing skill thanks to it's bigger heal and 6 second shorter cooldown than sacrificing the Blood Fiend.

I highly recommend giving it a try sometime if you like the power tank playstyle, more than happy to give you the exact build I use, all traits, gear etc.It's never going to be best DPS meta or anything but it's still very capable, definitely the kind of build you use to help people out when they get in over their heads which is a fun pastime for me.Oh yeah the Shroud skill 4 does AoE healing too, I've managed to get upwards of 6K AoE healing on it in some situations (around 4-5K normally) which is a nice boon for fractals and stuff, I've saved a lot of people with this build over the years not to mention being the main reason my fractal pug group hasn't wiped multiple times in the same encounter ^^

It is very low since you're ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability.

I'm not though.As I said it's main stat is power not toughness and despite no stat investment I can still hit 70% crit chance quite often.That's why I call it a Power Tank not just a Tank.

You'll just have to try it yourself to understand, it's by far the best build I've used that you could call a highly proficient Jack of all trades.It could be more tanky, it could be more dps focused, could be more healing focused but it sits nicely in the middle being respectably competent at all 3.I've attempted to make similar builds on other classes but they simply cannot replicate the same level of tankyness while possessing the same level of damage output and sustain, that's mainly where the minions and lifesteal come in and Necro is the only class that can use summons to that effect.There are ways to make other classes play Jack of all trade playstyles but they cannot compete with the Necromancer on that front.. not even remotely close.

Two of your stats are defensive, meaning the MAJORITY of you stats are defensive. that makes it Defensive.

Defensive yes but that's not what you said.You said i'm "ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability." and that's not true.

I may only be using 3 defined stats on my gear.. Power(Main), Toughness and Vitality but my traits and skills give me the ability to function as a character that's utalizing 4 different stats at high investment, therefore i'm not entirely specced for toughness/survivability.The 69.90% Crit chance I can get upto through the combination of my Sigil stacks and the enemies applied Vulnerability (which like I said is almost constantly 25 in any group based content) effectively means that my build can operate with more base crit chance than a character running a full set of Bezerker gear without me needing to put a single point into the precision stat on any of my weapons, trinkets or armour.

My Ranger in full bezerker gear has 2,145 precision giving him a base total of 59,52% Crit chance.. that's 10.38% crit chance lower than what my Necromancer can get without any gear precision stat investment at all.Granted the Ranger can self apply Fury and Might and my Necro build can't but it can get that from allies easily and often.The difference comes down to Ferocity and that's the only real weak point of the build, high crit chance but low ferocity crit damage.

It's still enough to make a noticable difference when I am operating at my peak though.High crit chance and raw power combined with high toughness and health.. and add to that a significant amount of constant incoming healing.No other class in Gw2 can function like that.. i've tried to replicate it in various ways on most classes but none of them can gain the same level of tank, damage and sustain at the same time.. Necro is the only class capable of it thanks to it's unique traits and skills.

The way the build works essentially means I am more or less running the exclusively PVP Paladin stat set in PvE and WvW.Power, Precision Main - Toughness, Vitality minor..Only i'm doing it with higher stats than the Paladin stats can provide.

Paladin Amulet + Superior Rune of Dolyak2050 Power2050 Precision (55.00% Crit chance, easily caps 100% crit chance with Vulnerability)1860 Toughness1660 Vitality (25,812 health, 17,811 Life Force)

My PvE Build + Superior Rune of Dolyak2381 Power1000 base precision (5% crit chance) +250 Precision Sigil (19,90% Crit chance) + Decimate defences Vulnerability (69,90% Crit chance)2261 Toughness2061 Vitality (29,822 health, 20,578 life force)

2 Primary stats are defensive yes but with maxed sigil and Decimate Defenses taking advantage of 25 Vulnerability it technically remains as offensive as it is defensive since when my crit chance is at 69,90% i'm effectively functioning as if my precision stat is 2384 which is higher than my base toughness, vitality and power.Factor in additional Toughness from traits though my two main stats are typically Power and Toughness.. but when operating at my peak they are Toughness and Precision.So either way my two highest stats at any one time are one offensive and one defensive, so I cannot be as you said "ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability" when the offensive capabilities of the build are equally present.If anything at best combining Power/Precision against Toughness/Vitality i'm technically more offenisve than defensive stat wise.

did you try mirage, or revenant of any kind with a mace, with runes of tormenting? that heals as much as lifesteal and you proc it every hit

Yep, I have a Hybrid Mace/Axe Renegade build with Sigil and Runes of tormenting, the heals are nothing close to the Necromancers lifesteal though.Necro Dagger is faster and lifesteals on hit as well as the big skill 2 heal, plus Revenant doesn't have 5-12 minions feeding it lifesteal either.

[Kuulpb.5412]

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:Lifesteal is in absolutely no way underwhelming in this game..

If you play even a slightly durable minion master with blood magic traitline you would know that lifesteal is amazing.

If they changed it to benefit from power and crits like you suggested it would literally make one of my favorite builds unkillable.

If they made lifesteal more powerful like that you'd have Necro MM's AFK farming world bosses and tons of other group events as the minion lifesteal would easily be enough to outheal many of those more powerful creatures.

one main issue I have is: Things seem to basically "require" other things to even function normally, lifesteal as it is now, is more "50-100 healing a hit" which is Almost nothing when you consider necromancers have 20-30,000 health and very low armour, so healing already has a lower "effect" on necromancers as Healing benefits from toughness over vitality.

the build you mention I assume is a Blood magic and Death magic thing, but as death magic outside of some general use PvE builds is REALLY bad it doesn't really mean much if you're "unkillable" when you do very low damage, Minions don't benefit from your power etc at all and for you to get any noticeable healing from it you need healing power or to hit lots of things fast: reworking lifesteal would mean reworking traits too, so the "unkillable" build wouldn't be unkillable since it'd be tweaked from a balance standpoint, although having said that necromancers need something they excel in because they have nothing atm, Healing is druid, condition is Mirage, tankinees is spellbreaker, Power is basically anything.

Blood, Death, Reaper yes, used to use Soul Reaping pre HoT.Designed largely around maximizing minions and heal sustain.. it's very hard to kill in PvE and prior to minion changes and the addition of Elite specs it was really hard to kill in PvP too pre HoT.I don't actually use Healing power (except the 150 I get from Last rites).. I use Soldier stats so my damage isn't as terrible as you might expect neither is the incoming healing.In many fights I can maintain around 10-11 minions sometimes 12 depending on what i'm running and how many enemies are around and that does add up both in damage and in incoming life steal.Sure I'm not going to win any DPS awards or anything but it's good enough to go toe to toe with just about anything solo.

Adding to that I have access to regen on dodge (Lesser Mark of Blood) and protection when leaving shroud (Beyond the Veil)Sometimes I use Death Nova for more minions = more lifesteal + more damage and tons of poisonfields when they die :D or Corrupter's Fervor for more toughness.I get more toughness per minion with Flesh of the Master amd More damage from minions and they take conditions with Necromantic Corruption.Minion and Player Lifesteal with Vampiric and Vampiric Pressence as well as stopping ally bleedout and being able to pull rez them in shroud.

Then in Reaper line I have lifesteal on shout + reduced cooldown for Rise per target, 15% damage increase to chilled foes which is easy to exploit with focus 5, Reaper Shroud and GS auto and lastly I get 300 ferocity and quickness while in shroud which goes really nicely with Decimate Defences 2% crit chance per stack of Vulnerability on foes allowing me to get 50% crit chance without needing any precision stat in the build at all.I can get more ferocity and power from food etc too if I want extra damage as well as more crits from Superior Sigil of Preception(25 stacks combined with 25 stacks of Vulnerability = 66.90% Crit chance without a single investment in precision)

Contributing to the healing factor as well I have constant health regen from Superior Rune of the Dolyak and I AoE heal on crits with Superior Sigil of Water.

So as you can see I have a lot of constant incoming healing from multiple sources mostly life steal from on average 10ish minions. (can also get more from food)Likewise multiple pockets of damage being done by myself, minions and poison fields caused by their death which are numerous thanks to timegated minions I get when I kill stuff and the minions summoned with Rise.I can get almost 70% crit chance without precision (which is ridiculous)My stats bounce around 2,382 Power + 2,340-2,500 Toughness depending on how many minions I have (2660 in shroud) which gives me a max Armor rating of 3,307- 3,500 (3600+ in shroud) Not so "very low" after all is it :PCombine that with 29,812 base Hp (30K + with food) and 20,571 Life force and you can see what I mean when I say lifesteal is already capable of making you nearly unkillable as it is without needing to completely sacrifice your damage.

Functions great as a solo build and benefits from a moderate damage buff when playing with others thanks to 25 vulnerability and perma chill being extremely easy to maintan with a small group.Dagger 2 even functions as a main healing skill thanks to it's bigger heal and 6 second shorter cooldown than sacrificing the Blood Fiend.

I highly recommend giving it a try sometime if you like the power tank playstyle, more than happy to give you the exact build I use, all traits, gear etc.It's never going to be best DPS meta or anything but it's still very capable, definitely the kind of build you use to help people out when they get in over their heads which is a fun pastime for me.Oh yeah the Shroud skill 4 does AoE healing too, I've managed to get upwards of 6K AoE healing on it in some situations (around 4-5K normally) which is a nice boon for fractals and stuff, I've saved a lot of people with this build over the years not to mention being the main reason my fractal pug group hasn't wiped multiple times in the same encounter ^^

It is very low since you're ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability.

I'm not though.As I said it's main stat is power not toughness and despite no stat investment I can still hit 70% crit chance quite often.That's why I call it a Power Tank not just a Tank.

You'll just have to try it yourself to understand, it's by far the best build I've used that you could call a highly proficient Jack of all trades.It could be more tanky, it could be more dps focused, could be more healing focused but it sits nicely in the middle being respectably competent at all 3.I've attempted to make similar builds on other classes but they simply cannot replicate the same level of tankyness while possessing the same level of damage output and sustain, that's mainly where the minions and lifesteal come in and Necro is the only class that can use summons to that effect.There are ways to make other classes play Jack of all trade playstyles but they cannot compete with the Necromancer on that front.. not even remotely close.

Two of your stats are defensive, meaning the MAJORITY of you stats are defensive. that makes it Defensive.

Defensive yes but that's not what you said.You said i'm "ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability." and that's not true.

I may only be using 3 defined stats on my gear.. Power(Main), Toughness and Vitality but my traits and skills give me the ability to function as a character that's utalizing 4 different stats at high investment, therefore i'm not entirely specced for toughness/survivability.The 69.90% Crit chance I can get upto through the combination of my Sigil stacks and the enemies applied Vulnerability (which like I said is almost constantly 25 in any group based content) effectively means that my build can operate with more base crit chance than a character running a full set of Bezerker gear without me needing to put a single point into the precision stat on any of my weapons, trinkets or armour.

My Ranger in full bezerker gear has 2,145 precision giving him a base total of 59,52% Crit chance.. that's 10.38% crit chance lower than what my Necromancer can get without any gear precision stat investment at all.Granted the Ranger can self apply Fury and Might and my Necro build can't but it can get that from allies easily and often.The difference comes down to Ferocity and that's the only real weak point of the build, high crit chance but low ferocity crit damage.

It's still enough to make a noticable difference when I am operating at my peak though.High crit chance and raw power combined with high toughness and health.. and add to that a significant amount of constant incoming healing.No other class in Gw2 can function like that.. i've tried to replicate it in various ways on most classes but none of them can gain the same level of tank, damage and sustain at the same time.. Necro is the only class capable of it thanks to it's unique traits and skills.

The way the build works essentially means I am more or less running the exclusively PVP Paladin stat set in PvE and WvW.Power, Precision Main - Toughness, Vitality minor..Only i'm doing it with higher stats than the Paladin stats can provide.

Paladin Amulet + Superior Rune of Dolyak2050 Power2050 Precision (55.00% Crit chance, easily caps 100% crit chance with Vulnerability)1860 Toughness1660 Vitality (25,812 health, 17,811 Life Force)

My PvE Build + Superior Rune of Dolyak2381 Power1000 base precision (5% crit chance) +250 Precision Sigil (19,90% Crit chance) + Decimate defences Vulnerability (69,90% Crit chance)2261 Toughness2061 Vitality (29,822 health, 20,578 life force)

2 Primary stats are defensive yes but with maxed sigil and Decimate Defenses taking advantage of 25 Vulnerability it technically remains as offensive as it is defensive since when my crit chance is at 69,90% i'm effectively functioning as if my precision stat is 2384 which is higher than my base toughness, vitality and power.Factor in additional Toughness from traits though my two main stats are typically Power and Toughness.. but when operating at my peak they are Toughness and Precision.So either way my two highest stats at any one time are one offensive and one defensive, so I cannot be as you said "ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability" when the offensive capabilities of the build are equally present.If anything at best combining Power/Precision against Toughness/Vitality i'm technically more offenisve than defensive stat wise.

did you try mirage, or revenant of any kind with a mace, with runes of tormenting? that heals as much as lifesteal and you proc it every hit

Yep, I have a Hybrid Mace/Axe Renegade build with Sigil and Runes of tormenting, the heals are nothing close to the Necromancers lifesteal though.Necro Dagger is faster and lifesteals on hit as well as the big skill 2 heal, plus Revenant doesn't have 5-12 minions feeding it lifesteal either.

Yeah but did you try Mallyx's AoE skill + the torment on chill trait? you apply torment ( in an AoE) really fast

[Teratus.2859]

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:Lifesteal is in absolutely no way underwhelming in this game..

If you play even a slightly durable minion master with blood magic traitline you would know that lifesteal is amazing.

If they changed it to benefit from power and crits like you suggested it would literally make one of my favorite builds unkillable.

If they made lifesteal more powerful like that you'd have Necro MM's AFK farming world bosses and tons of other group events as the minion lifesteal would easily be enough to outheal many of those more powerful creatures.

one main issue I have is: Things seem to basically "require" other things to even function normally, lifesteal as it is now, is more "50-100 healing a hit" which is Almost nothing when you consider necromancers have 20-30,000 health and very low armour, so healing already has a lower "effect" on necromancers as Healing benefits from toughness over vitality.

the build you mention I assume is a Blood magic and Death magic thing, but as death magic outside of some general use PvE builds is REALLY bad it doesn't really mean much if you're "unkillable" when you do very low damage, Minions don't benefit from your power etc at all and for you to get any noticeable healing from it you need healing power or to hit lots of things fast: reworking lifesteal would mean reworking traits too, so the "unkillable" build wouldn't be unkillable since it'd be tweaked from a balance standpoint, although having said that necromancers need something they excel in because they have nothing atm, Healing is druid, condition is Mirage, tankinees is spellbreaker, Power is basically anything.

Blood, Death, Reaper yes, used to use Soul Reaping pre HoT.Designed largely around maximizing minions and heal sustain.. it's very hard to kill in PvE and prior to minion changes and the addition of Elite specs it was really hard to kill in PvP too pre HoT.I don't actually use Healing power (except the 150 I get from Last rites).. I use Soldier stats so my damage isn't as terrible as you might expect neither is the incoming healing.In many fights I can maintain around 10-11 minions sometimes 12 depending on what i'm running and how many enemies are around and that does add up both in damage and in incoming life steal.Sure I'm not going to win any DPS awards or anything but it's good enough to go toe to toe with just about anything solo.

Adding to that I have access to regen on dodge (Lesser Mark of Blood) and protection when leaving shroud (Beyond the Veil)Sometimes I use Death Nova for more minions = more lifesteal + more damage and tons of poisonfields when they die :D or Corrupter's Fervor for more toughness.I get more toughness per minion with Flesh of the Master amd More damage from minions and they take conditions with Necromantic Corruption.Minion and Player Lifesteal with Vampiric and Vampiric Pressence as well as stopping ally bleedout and being able to pull rez them in shroud.

Then in Reaper line I have lifesteal on shout + reduced cooldown for Rise per target, 15% damage increase to chilled foes which is easy to exploit with focus 5, Reaper Shroud and GS auto and lastly I get 300 ferocity and quickness while in shroud which goes really nicely with Decimate Defences 2% crit chance per stack of Vulnerability on foes allowing me to get 50% crit chance without needing any precision stat in the build at all.I can get more ferocity and power from food etc too if I want extra damage as well as more crits from Superior Sigil of Preception(25 stacks combined with 25 stacks of Vulnerability = 66.90% Crit chance without a single investment in precision)

Contributing to the healing factor as well I have constant health regen from Superior Rune of the Dolyak and I AoE heal on crits with Superior Sigil of Water.

So as you can see I have a lot of constant incoming healing from multiple sources mostly life steal from on average 10ish minions. (can also get more from food)Likewise multiple pockets of damage being done by myself, minions and poison fields caused by their death which are numerous thanks to timegated minions I get when I kill stuff and the minions summoned with Rise.I can get almost 70% crit chance without precision (which is ridiculous)My stats bounce around 2,382 Power + 2,340-2,500 Toughness depending on how many minions I have (2660 in shroud) which gives me a max Armor rating of 3,307- 3,500 (3600+ in shroud) Not so "very low" after all is it :PCombine that with 29,812 base Hp (30K + with food) and 20,571 Life force and you can see what I mean when I say lifesteal is already capable of making you nearly unkillable as it is without needing to completely sacrifice your damage.

Functions great as a solo build and benefits from a moderate damage buff when playing with others thanks to 25 vulnerability and perma chill being extremely easy to maintan with a small group.Dagger 2 even functions as a main healing skill thanks to it's bigger heal and 6 second shorter cooldown than sacrificing the Blood Fiend.

I highly recommend giving it a try sometime if you like the power tank playstyle, more than happy to give you the exact build I use, all traits, gear etc.It's never going to be best DPS meta or anything but it's still very capable, definitely the kind of build you use to help people out when they get in over their heads which is a fun pastime for me.Oh yeah the Shroud skill 4 does AoE healing too, I've managed to get upwards of 6K AoE healing on it in some situations (around 4-5K normally) which is a nice boon for fractals and stuff, I've saved a lot of people with this build over the years not to mention being the main reason my fractal pug group hasn't wiped multiple times in the same encounter ^^

It is very low since you're ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability.

I'm not though.As I said it's main stat is power not toughness and despite no stat investment I can still hit 70% crit chance quite often.That's why I call it a Power Tank not just a Tank.

You'll just have to try it yourself to understand, it's by far the best build I've used that you could call a highly proficient Jack of all trades.It could be more tanky, it could be more dps focused, could be more healing focused but it sits nicely in the middle being respectably competent at all 3.I've attempted to make similar builds on other classes but they simply cannot replicate the same level of tankyness while possessing the same level of damage output and sustain, that's mainly where the minions and lifesteal come in and Necro is the only class that can use summons to that effect.There are ways to make other classes play Jack of all trade playstyles but they cannot compete with the Necromancer on that front.. not even remotely close.

Two of your stats are defensive, meaning the MAJORITY of you stats are defensive. that makes it Defensive.

Defensive yes but that's not what you said.You said i'm "ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability." and that's not true.

I may only be using 3 defined stats on my gear.. Power(Main), Toughness and Vitality but my traits and skills give me the ability to function as a character that's utalizing 4 different stats at high investment, therefore i'm not entirely specced for toughness/survivability.The 69.90% Crit chance I can get upto through the combination of my Sigil stacks and the enemies applied Vulnerability (which like I said is almost constantly 25 in any group based content) effectively means that my build can operate with more base crit chance than a character running a full set of Bezerker gear without me needing to put a single point into the precision stat on any of my weapons, trinkets or armour.

My Ranger in full bezerker gear has 2,145 precision giving him a base total of 59,52% Crit chance.. that's 10.38% crit chance lower than what my Necromancer can get without any gear precision stat investment at all.Granted the Ranger can self apply Fury and Might and my Necro build can't but it can get that from allies easily and often.The difference comes down to Ferocity and that's the only real weak point of the build, high crit chance but low ferocity crit damage.

It's still enough to make a noticable difference when I am operating at my peak though.High crit chance and raw power combined with high toughness and health.. and add to that a significant amount of constant incoming healing.No other class in Gw2 can function like that.. i've tried to replicate it in various ways on most classes but none of them can gain the same level of tank, damage and sustain at the same time.. Necro is the only class capable of it thanks to it's unique traits and skills.

The way the build works essentially means I am more or less running the exclusively PVP Paladin stat set in PvE and WvW.Power, Precision Main - Toughness, Vitality minor..Only i'm doing it with higher stats than the Paladin stats can provide.

Paladin Amulet + Superior Rune of Dolyak2050 Power2050 Precision (55.00% Crit chance, easily caps 100% crit chance with Vulnerability)1860 Toughness1660 Vitality (25,812 health, 17,811 Life Force)

My PvE Build + Superior Rune of Dolyak2381 Power1000 base precision (5% crit chance) +250 Precision Sigil (19,90% Crit chance) + Decimate defences Vulnerability (69,90% Crit chance)2261 Toughness2061 Vitality (29,822 health, 20,578 life force)

2 Primary stats are defensive yes but with maxed sigil and Decimate Defenses taking advantage of 25 Vulnerability it technically remains as offensive as it is defensive since when my crit chance is at 69,90% i'm effectively functioning as if my precision stat is 2384 which is higher than my base toughness, vitality and power.Factor in additional Toughness from traits though my two main stats are typically Power and Toughness.. but when operating at my peak they are Toughness and Precision.So either way my two highest stats at any one time are one offensive and one defensive, so I cannot be as you said "ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability" when the offensive capabilities of the build are equally present.If anything at best combining Power/Precision against Toughness/Vitality i'm technically more offenisve than defensive stat wise.

did you try mirage, or revenant of any kind with a mace, with runes of tormenting? that heals as much as lifesteal and you proc it every hit

Yep, I have a Hybrid Mace/Axe Renegade build with Sigil and Runes of tormenting, the heals are nothing close to the Necromancers lifesteal though.Necro Dagger is faster and lifesteals on hit as well as the big skill 2 heal, plus Revenant doesn't have 5-12 minions feeding it lifesteal either.

Yeah but did you try Mallyx's AoE skill + the torment on chill trait? you apply torment ( in an AoE) really fast

I will have to check to be sure but I think so.I don't use my Revenant all that much tbh but It is built to maximize torment so I probably do use it considering each traitline is kind of defined to a legend and I do use Mallyx.

[Kuulpb.5412]

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:Lifesteal is in absolutely no way underwhelming in this game..

If you play even a slightly durable minion master with blood magic traitline you would know that lifesteal is amazing.

If they changed it to benefit from power and crits like you suggested it would literally make one of my favorite builds unkillable.

If they made lifesteal more powerful like that you'd have Necro MM's AFK farming world bosses and tons of other group events as the minion lifesteal would easily be enough to outheal many of those more powerful creatures.

one main issue I have is: Things seem to basically "require" other things to even function normally, lifesteal as it is now, is more "50-100 healing a hit" which is Almost nothing when you consider necromancers have 20-30,000 health and very low armour, so healing already has a lower "effect" on necromancers as Healing benefits from toughness over vitality.

the build you mention I assume is a Blood magic and Death magic thing, but as death magic outside of some general use PvE builds is REALLY bad it doesn't really mean much if you're "unkillable" when you do very low damage, Minions don't benefit from your power etc at all and for you to get any noticeable healing from it you need healing power or to hit lots of things fast: reworking lifesteal would mean reworking traits too, so the "unkillable" build wouldn't be unkillable since it'd be tweaked from a balance standpoint, although having said that necromancers need something they excel in because they have nothing atm, Healing is druid, condition is Mirage, tankinees is spellbreaker, Power is basically anything.

Blood, Death, Reaper yes, used to use Soul Reaping pre HoT.Designed largely around maximizing minions and heal sustain.. it's very hard to kill in PvE and prior to minion changes and the addition of Elite specs it was really hard to kill in PvP too pre HoT.I don't actually use Healing power (except the 150 I get from Last rites).. I use Soldier stats so my damage isn't as terrible as you might expect neither is the incoming healing.In many fights I can maintain around 10-11 minions sometimes 12 depending on what i'm running and how many enemies are around and that does add up both in damage and in incoming life steal.Sure I'm not going to win any DPS awards or anything but it's good enough to go toe to toe with just about anything solo.

Adding to that I have access to regen on dodge (Lesser Mark of Blood) and protection when leaving shroud (Beyond the Veil)Sometimes I use Death Nova for more minions = more lifesteal + more damage and tons of poisonfields when they die :D or Corrupter's Fervor for more toughness.I get more toughness per minion with Flesh of the Master amd More damage from minions and they take conditions with Necromantic Corruption.Minion and Player Lifesteal with Vampiric and Vampiric Pressence as well as stopping ally bleedout and being able to pull rez them in shroud.

Then in Reaper line I have lifesteal on shout + reduced cooldown for Rise per target, 15% damage increase to chilled foes which is easy to exploit with focus 5, Reaper Shroud and GS auto and lastly I get 300 ferocity and quickness while in shroud which goes really nicely with Decimate Defences 2% crit chance per stack of Vulnerability on foes allowing me to get 50% crit chance without needing any precision stat in the build at all.I can get more ferocity and power from food etc too if I want extra damage as well as more crits from Superior Sigil of Preception(25 stacks combined with 25 stacks of Vulnerability = 66.90% Crit chance without a single investment in precision)

Contributing to the healing factor as well I have constant health regen from Superior Rune of the Dolyak and I AoE heal on crits with Superior Sigil of Water.

So as you can see I have a lot of constant incoming healing from multiple sources mostly life steal from on average 10ish minions. (can also get more from food)Likewise multiple pockets of damage being done by myself, minions and poison fields caused by their death which are numerous thanks to timegated minions I get when I kill stuff and the minions summoned with Rise.I can get almost 70% crit chance without precision (which is ridiculous)My stats bounce around 2,382 Power + 2,340-2,500 Toughness depending on how many minions I have (2660 in shroud) which gives me a max Armor rating of 3,307- 3,500 (3600+ in shroud) Not so "very low" after all is it :PCombine that with 29,812 base Hp (30K + with food) and 20,571 Life force and you can see what I mean when I say lifesteal is already capable of making you nearly unkillable as it is without needing to completely sacrifice your damage.

Functions great as a solo build and benefits from a moderate damage buff when playing with others thanks to 25 vulnerability and perma chill being extremely easy to maintan with a small group.Dagger 2 even functions as a main healing skill thanks to it's bigger heal and 6 second shorter cooldown than sacrificing the Blood Fiend.

I highly recommend giving it a try sometime if you like the power tank playstyle, more than happy to give you the exact build I use, all traits, gear etc.It's never going to be best DPS meta or anything but it's still very capable, definitely the kind of build you use to help people out when they get in over their heads which is a fun pastime for me.Oh yeah the Shroud skill 4 does AoE healing too, I've managed to get upwards of 6K AoE healing on it in some situations (around 4-5K normally) which is a nice boon for fractals and stuff, I've saved a lot of people with this build over the years not to mention being the main reason my fractal pug group hasn't wiped multiple times in the same encounter ^^

It is very low since you're ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability.

I'm not though.As I said it's main stat is power not toughness and despite no stat investment I can still hit 70% crit chance quite often.That's why I call it a Power Tank not just a Tank.

You'll just have to try it yourself to understand, it's by far the best build I've used that you could call a highly proficient Jack of all trades.It could be more tanky, it could be more dps focused, could be more healing focused but it sits nicely in the middle being respectably competent at all 3.I've attempted to make similar builds on other classes but they simply cannot replicate the same level of tankyness while possessing the same level of damage output and sustain, that's mainly where the minions and lifesteal come in and Necro is the only class that can use summons to that effect.There are ways to make other classes play Jack of all trade playstyles but they cannot compete with the Necromancer on that front.. not even remotely close.

Two of your stats are defensive, meaning the MAJORITY of you stats are defensive. that makes it Defensive.

Defensive yes but that's not what you said.You said i'm "ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability." and that's not true.

I may only be using 3 defined stats on my gear.. Power(Main), Toughness and Vitality but my traits and skills give me the ability to function as a character that's utalizing 4 different stats at high investment, therefore i'm not entirely specced for toughness/survivability.The 69.90% Crit chance I can get upto through the combination of my Sigil stacks and the enemies applied Vulnerability (which like I said is almost constantly 25 in any group based content) effectively means that my build can operate with more base crit chance than a character running a full set of Bezerker gear without me needing to put a single point into the precision stat on any of my weapons, trinkets or armour.

My Ranger in full bezerker gear has 2,145 precision giving him a base total of 59,52% Crit chance.. that's 10.38% crit chance lower than what my Necromancer can get without any gear precision stat investment at all.Granted the Ranger can self apply Fury and Might and my Necro build can't but it can get that from allies easily and often.The difference comes down to Ferocity and that's the only real weak point of the build, high crit chance but low ferocity crit damage.

It's still enough to make a noticable difference when I am operating at my peak though.High crit chance and raw power combined with high toughness and health.. and add to that a significant amount of constant incoming healing.No other class in Gw2 can function like that.. i've tried to replicate it in various ways on most classes but none of them can gain the same level of tank, damage and sustain at the same time.. Necro is the only class capable of it thanks to it's unique traits and skills.

The way the build works essentially means I am more or less running the exclusively PVP Paladin stat set in PvE and WvW.Power, Precision Main - Toughness, Vitality minor..Only i'm doing it with higher stats than the Paladin stats can provide.

Paladin Amulet + Superior Rune of Dolyak2050 Power2050 Precision (55.00% Crit chance, easily caps 100% crit chance with Vulnerability)1860 Toughness1660 Vitality (25,812 health, 17,811 Life Force)

My PvE Build + Superior Rune of Dolyak2381 Power1000 base precision (5% crit chance) +250 Precision Sigil (19,90% Crit chance) + Decimate defences Vulnerability (69,90% Crit chance)2261 Toughness2061 Vitality (29,822 health, 20,578 life force)

2 Primary stats are defensive yes but with maxed sigil and Decimate Defenses taking advantage of 25 Vulnerability it technically remains as offensive as it is defensive since when my crit chance is at 69,90% i'm effectively functioning as if my precision stat is 2384 which is higher than my base toughness, vitality and power.Factor in additional Toughness from traits though my two main stats are typically Power and Toughness.. but when operating at my peak they are Toughness and Precision.So either way my two highest stats at any one time are one offensive and one defensive, so I cannot be as you said "ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability" when the offensive capabilities of the build are equally present.If anything at best combining Power/Precision against Toughness/Vitality i'm technically more offenisve than defensive stat wise.

did you try mirage, or revenant of any kind with a mace, with runes of tormenting? that heals as much as lifesteal and you proc it every hit

Yep, I have a Hybrid Mace/Axe Renegade build with Sigil and Runes of tormenting, the heals are nothing close to the Necromancers lifesteal though.Necro Dagger is faster and lifesteals on hit as well as the big skill 2 heal, plus Revenant doesn't have 5-12 minions feeding it lifesteal either.

Yeah but did you try Mallyx's AoE skill + the torment on chill trait? you apply torment ( in an AoE) really fast

I will have to check to be sure but I think so.I don't use my Revenant all that much tbh but It is built to maximize torment so I probably do use it considering each traitline is kind of defined to a legend and I do use Mallyx.

Regarding the whole lifesteal thing, The existence of the rune of tormenting states lifesteal needs work, as lifesteal is on the following: Necromancer, Thief, Revenant.Torment is on the following: Warrior, Revenant, Thief, Mesmer, Necromancer. This means that the Rune of Tormenting for Condition-centric builds is much better than lifesteal as in this list, professions like revenant get a TON of torment. On the flip side, Lifesteal is NOT good for Crit-centric builds because it CANNOT CRIT, so it is Lacklustre in both condition and crit, which having a replacement in condition. The only professions that should have Lifesteal as a central point are Necromancer and Revenants, these do as a "central" idea, however due to the lack of any real benefit to taking lifesteal over some other trait ( e.g. taking lifesteal wells over Transfusion, or taking Assassin's Annihilation over Swift Termination), If lifesteal was an entire mechanic that could be built around, like torment for revenants etc, then I feel that it'd be in a much better place.

[Teratus.2859]

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:Lifesteal is in absolutely no way underwhelming in this game..

If you play even a slightly durable minion master with blood magic traitline you would know that lifesteal is amazing.

If they changed it to benefit from power and crits like you suggested it would literally make one of my favorite builds unkillable.

If they made lifesteal more powerful like that you'd have Necro MM's AFK farming world bosses and tons of other group events as the minion lifesteal would easily be enough to outheal many of those more powerful creatures.

one main issue I have is: Things seem to basically "require" other things to even function normally, lifesteal as it is now, is more "50-100 healing a hit" which is Almost nothing when you consider necromancers have 20-30,000 health and very low armour, so healing already has a lower "effect" on necromancers as Healing benefits from toughness over vitality.

the build you mention I assume is a Blood magic and Death magic thing, but as death magic outside of some general use PvE builds is REALLY bad it doesn't really mean much if you're "unkillable" when you do very low damage, Minions don't benefit from your power etc at all and for you to get any noticeable healing from it you need healing power or to hit lots of things fast: reworking lifesteal would mean reworking traits too, so the "unkillable" build wouldn't be unkillable since it'd be tweaked from a balance standpoint, although having said that necromancers need something they excel in because they have nothing atm, Healing is druid, condition is Mirage, tankinees is spellbreaker, Power is basically anything.

Blood, Death, Reaper yes, used to use Soul Reaping pre HoT.Designed largely around maximizing minions and heal sustain.. it's very hard to kill in PvE and prior to minion changes and the addition of Elite specs it was really hard to kill in PvP too pre HoT.I don't actually use Healing power (except the 150 I get from Last rites).. I use Soldier stats so my damage isn't as terrible as you might expect neither is the incoming healing.In many fights I can maintain around 10-11 minions sometimes 12 depending on what i'm running and how many enemies are around and that does add up both in damage and in incoming life steal.Sure I'm not going to win any DPS awards or anything but it's good enough to go toe to toe with just about anything solo.

Adding to that I have access to regen on dodge (Lesser Mark of Blood) and protection when leaving shroud (Beyond the Veil)Sometimes I use Death Nova for more minions = more lifesteal + more damage and tons of poisonfields when they die :D or Corrupter's Fervor for more toughness.I get more toughness per minion with Flesh of the Master amd More damage from minions and they take conditions with Necromantic Corruption.Minion and Player Lifesteal with Vampiric and Vampiric Pressence as well as stopping ally bleedout and being able to pull rez them in shroud.

Then in Reaper line I have lifesteal on shout + reduced cooldown for Rise per target, 15% damage increase to chilled foes which is easy to exploit with focus 5, Reaper Shroud and GS auto and lastly I get 300 ferocity and quickness while in shroud which goes really nicely with Decimate Defences 2% crit chance per stack of Vulnerability on foes allowing me to get 50% crit chance without needing any precision stat in the build at all.I can get more ferocity and power from food etc too if I want extra damage as well as more crits from Superior Sigil of Preception(25 stacks combined with 25 stacks of Vulnerability = 66.90% Crit chance without a single investment in precision)

Contributing to the healing factor as well I have constant health regen from Superior Rune of the Dolyak and I AoE heal on crits with Superior Sigil of Water.

So as you can see I have a lot of constant incoming healing from multiple sources mostly life steal from on average 10ish minions. (can also get more from food)Likewise multiple pockets of damage being done by myself, minions and poison fields caused by their death which are numerous thanks to timegated minions I get when I kill stuff and the minions summoned with Rise.I can get almost 70% crit chance without precision (which is ridiculous)My stats bounce around 2,382 Power + 2,340-2,500 Toughness depending on how many minions I have (2660 in shroud) which gives me a max Armor rating of 3,307- 3,500 (3600+ in shroud) Not so "very low" after all is it :PCombine that with 29,812 base Hp (30K + with food) and 20,571 Life force and you can see what I mean when I say lifesteal is already capable of making you nearly unkillable as it is without needing to completely sacrifice your damage.

Functions great as a solo build and benefits from a moderate damage buff when playing with others thanks to 25 vulnerability and perma chill being extremely easy to maintan with a small group.Dagger 2 even functions as a main healing skill thanks to it's bigger heal and 6 second shorter cooldown than sacrificing the Blood Fiend.

I highly recommend giving it a try sometime if you like the power tank playstyle, more than happy to give you the exact build I use, all traits, gear etc.It's never going to be best DPS meta or anything but it's still very capable, definitely the kind of build you use to help people out when they get in over their heads which is a fun pastime for me.Oh yeah the Shroud skill 4 does AoE healing too, I've managed to get upwards of 6K AoE healing on it in some situations (around 4-5K normally) which is a nice boon for fractals and stuff, I've saved a lot of people with this build over the years not to mention being the main reason my fractal pug group hasn't wiped multiple times in the same encounter ^^

It is very low since you're ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability.

I'm not though.As I said it's main stat is power not toughness and despite no stat investment I can still hit 70% crit chance quite often.That's why I call it a Power Tank not just a Tank.

You'll just have to try it yourself to understand, it's by far the best build I've used that you could call a highly proficient Jack of all trades.It could be more tanky, it could be more dps focused, could be more healing focused but it sits nicely in the middle being respectably competent at all 3.I've attempted to make similar builds on other classes but they simply cannot replicate the same level of tankyness while possessing the same level of damage output and sustain, that's mainly where the minions and lifesteal come in and Necro is the only class that can use summons to that effect.There are ways to make other classes play Jack of all trade playstyles but they cannot compete with the Necromancer on that front.. not even remotely close.

Two of your stats are defensive, meaning the MAJORITY of you stats are defensive. that makes it Defensive.

Defensive yes but that's not what you said.You said i'm "ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability." and that's not true.

I may only be using 3 defined stats on my gear.. Power(Main), Toughness and Vitality but my traits and skills give me the ability to function as a character that's utalizing 4 different stats at high investment, therefore i'm not entirely specced for toughness/survivability.The 69.90% Crit chance I can get upto through the combination of my Sigil stacks and the enemies applied Vulnerability (which like I said is almost constantly 25 in any group based content) effectively means that my build can operate with more base crit chance than a character running a full set of Bezerker gear without me needing to put a single point into the precision stat on any of my weapons, trinkets or armour.

My Ranger in full bezerker gear has 2,145 precision giving him a base total of 59,52% Crit chance.. that's 10.38% crit chance lower than what my Necromancer can get without any gear precision stat investment at all.Granted the Ranger can self apply Fury and Might and my Necro build can't but it can get that from allies easily and often.The difference comes down to Ferocity and that's the only real weak point of the build, high crit chance but low ferocity crit damage.

It's still enough to make a noticable difference when I am operating at my peak though.High crit chance and raw power combined with high toughness and health.. and add to that a significant amount of constant incoming healing.No other class in Gw2 can function like that.. i've tried to replicate it in various ways on most classes but none of them can gain the same level of tank, damage and sustain at the same time.. Necro is the only class capable of it thanks to it's unique traits and skills.

The way the build works essentially means I am more or less running the exclusively PVP Paladin stat set in PvE and WvW.Power, Precision Main - Toughness, Vitality minor..Only i'm doing it with higher stats than the Paladin stats can provide.

Paladin Amulet + Superior Rune of Dolyak2050 Power2050 Precision (55.00% Crit chance, easily caps 100% crit chance with Vulnerability)1860 Toughness1660 Vitality (25,812 health, 17,811 Life Force)

My PvE Build + Superior Rune of Dolyak2381 Power1000 base precision (5% crit chance) +250 Precision Sigil (19,90% Crit chance) + Decimate defences Vulnerability (69,90% Crit chance)2261 Toughness2061 Vitality (29,822 health, 20,578 life force)

2 Primary stats are defensive yes but with maxed sigil and Decimate Defenses taking advantage of 25 Vulnerability it technically remains as offensive as it is defensive since when my crit chance is at 69,90% i'm effectively functioning as if my precision stat is 2384 which is higher than my base toughness, vitality and power.Factor in additional Toughness from traits though my two main stats are typically Power and Toughness.. but when operating at my peak they are Toughness and Precision.So either way my two highest stats at any one time are one offensive and one defensive, so I cannot be as you said "ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability" when the offensive capabilities of the build are equally present.If anything at best combining Power/Precision against Toughness/Vitality i'm technically more offenisve than defensive stat wise.

did you try mirage, or revenant of any kind with a mace, with runes of tormenting? that heals as much as lifesteal and you proc it every hit

Yep, I have a Hybrid Mace/Axe Renegade build with Sigil and Runes of tormenting, the heals are nothing close to the Necromancers lifesteal though.Necro Dagger is faster and lifesteals on hit as well as the big skill 2 heal, plus Revenant doesn't have 5-12 minions feeding it lifesteal either.

Yeah but did you try Mallyx's AoE skill + the torment on chill trait? you apply torment ( in an AoE) really fast

I will have to check to be sure but I think so.I don't use my Revenant all that much tbh but It is built to maximize torment so I probably do use it considering each traitline is kind of defined to a legend and I do use Mallyx.

Regarding the whole lifesteal thing, The existence of the rune of tormenting states lifesteal needs work, as lifesteal is on the following: Necromancer, Thief, Revenant.Torment is on the following: Warrior, Revenant, Thief, Mesmer, Necromancer. This means that the Rune of Tormenting for Condition-centric builds is much better than lifesteal as in this list, professions like revenant get a TON of torment. On the flip side, Lifesteal is NOT good for Crit-centric builds because it CANNOT CRIT, so it is Lacklustre in both condition and crit, which having a replacement in condition. The only professions that should have Lifesteal as a central point are Necromancer and Revenants, these do as a "central" idea, however due to the lack of any real benefit to taking lifesteal over some other trait ( e.g. taking lifesteal wells over Transfusion, or taking Assassin's Annihilation over Swift Termination), If lifesteal was an entire mechanic that could be built around, like torment for revenants etc, then I feel that it'd be in a much better place.

I guess it depends on how you use it, I can't speak for lifesteal wells as i've never tried it but playing for max Minions gives a ton of lifesteal so if they did improve it, give it crits etc it would make my minion build horribly OP..Tanky MM's are probably the reason lifesteal is what it is atm, it's so easy to stack it with regen, and regular HP tics from food and runes that the sustain potential is massive even without investing in healing power.

[Nimon.7840]

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

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@Teratus.2859 said:Lifesteal is in absolutely no way underwhelming in this game..

If you play even a slightly durable minion master with blood magic traitline you would know that lifesteal is amazing.

If they changed it to benefit from power and crits like you suggested it would literally make one of my favorite builds unkillable.

If they made lifesteal more powerful like that you'd have Necro MM's AFK farming world bosses and tons of other group events as the minion lifesteal would easily be enough to outheal many of those more powerful creatures.

one main issue I have is: Things seem to basically "require" other things to even function normally, lifesteal as it is now, is more "50-100 healing a hit" which is Almost nothing when you consider necromancers have 20-30,000 health and very low armour, so healing already has a lower "effect" on necromancers as Healing benefits from toughness over vitality.

the build you mention I assume is a Blood magic and Death magic thing, but as death magic outside of some general use PvE builds is REALLY bad it doesn't really mean much if you're "unkillable" when you do very low damage, Minions don't benefit from your power etc at all and for you to get any noticeable healing from it you need healing power or to hit lots of things fast: reworking lifesteal would mean reworking traits too, so the "unkillable" build wouldn't be unkillable since it'd be tweaked from a balance standpoint, although having said that necromancers need something they excel in because they have nothing atm, Healing is druid, condition is Mirage, tankinees is spellbreaker, Power is basically anything.

Blood, Death, Reaper yes, used to use Soul Reaping pre HoT.Designed largely around maximizing minions and heal sustain.. it's very hard to kill in PvE and prior to minion changes and the addition of Elite specs it was really hard to kill in PvP too pre HoT.I don't actually use Healing power (except the 150 I get from Last rites).. I use Soldier stats so my damage isn't as terrible as you might expect neither is the incoming healing.In many fights I can maintain around 10-11 minions sometimes 12 depending on what i'm running and how many enemies are around and that does add up both in damage and in incoming life steal.Sure I'm not going to win any DPS awards or anything but it's good enough to go toe to toe with just about anything solo.

Adding to that I have access to regen on dodge (Lesser Mark of Blood) and protection when leaving shroud (Beyond the Veil)Sometimes I use Death Nova for more minions = more lifesteal + more damage and tons of poisonfields when they die :D or Corrupter's Fervor for more toughness.I get more toughness per minion with Flesh of the Master amd More damage from minions and they take conditions with Necromantic Corruption.Minion and Player Lifesteal with Vampiric and Vampiric Pressence as well as stopping ally bleedout and being able to pull rez them in shroud.

Then in Reaper line I have lifesteal on shout + reduced cooldown for Rise per target, 15% damage increase to chilled foes which is easy to exploit with focus 5, Reaper Shroud and GS auto and lastly I get 300 ferocity and quickness while in shroud which goes really nicely with Decimate Defences 2% crit chance per stack of Vulnerability on foes allowing me to get 50% crit chance without needing any precision stat in the build at all.I can get more ferocity and power from food etc too if I want extra damage as well as more crits from Superior Sigil of Preception(25 stacks combined with 25 stacks of Vulnerability = 66.90% Crit chance without a single investment in precision)

Contributing to the healing factor as well I have constant health regen from Superior Rune of the Dolyak and I AoE heal on crits with Superior Sigil of Water.

So as you can see I have a lot of constant incoming healing from multiple sources mostly life steal from on average 10ish minions. (can also get more from food)Likewise multiple pockets of damage being done by myself, minions and poison fields caused by their death which are numerous thanks to timegated minions I get when I kill stuff and the minions summoned with Rise.I can get almost 70% crit chance without precision (which is ridiculous)My stats bounce around 2,382 Power + 2,340-2,500 Toughness depending on how many minions I have (2660 in shroud) which gives me a max Armor rating of 3,307- 3,500 (3600+ in shroud) Not so "very low" after all is it :PCombine that with 29,812 base Hp (30K + with food) and 20,571 Life force and you can see what I mean when I say lifesteal is already capable of making you nearly unkillable as it is without needing to completely sacrifice your damage.

Functions great as a solo build and benefits from a moderate damage buff when playing with others thanks to 25 vulnerability and perma chill being extremely easy to maintan with a small group.Dagger 2 even functions as a main healing skill thanks to it's bigger heal and 6 second shorter cooldown than sacrificing the Blood Fiend.

I highly recommend giving it a try sometime if you like the power tank playstyle, more than happy to give you the exact build I use, all traits, gear etc.It's never going to be best DPS meta or anything but it's still very capable, definitely the kind of build you use to help people out when they get in over their heads which is a fun pastime for me.Oh yeah the Shroud skill 4 does AoE healing too, I've managed to get upwards of 6K AoE healing on it in some situations (around 4-5K normally) which is a nice boon for fractals and stuff, I've saved a lot of people with this build over the years not to mention being the main reason my fractal pug group hasn't wiped multiple times in the same encounter ^^

It is very low since you're ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability.

I'm not though.As I said it's main stat is power not toughness and despite no stat investment I can still hit 70% crit chance quite often.That's why I call it a Power Tank not just a Tank.

You'll just have to try it yourself to understand, it's by far the best build I've used that you could call a highly proficient Jack of all trades.It could be more tanky, it could be more dps focused, could be more healing focused but it sits nicely in the middle being respectably competent at all 3.I've attempted to make similar builds on other classes but they simply cannot replicate the same level of tankyness while possessing the same level of damage output and sustain, that's mainly where the minions and lifesteal come in and Necro is the only class that can use summons to that effect.There are ways to make other classes play Jack of all trade playstyles but they cannot compete with the Necromancer on that front.. not even remotely close.

Two of your stats are defensive, meaning the MAJORITY of you stats are defensive. that makes it Defensive.

Defensive yes but that's not what you said.You said i'm "ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability." and that's not true.

I may only be using 3 defined stats on my gear.. Power(Main), Toughness and Vitality but my traits and skills give me the ability to function as a character that's utalizing 4 different stats at high investment, therefore i'm not entirely specced for toughness/survivability.The 69.90% Crit chance I can get upto through the combination of my Sigil stacks and the enemies applied Vulnerability (which like I said is almost constantly 25 in any group based content) effectively means that my build can operate with more base crit chance than a character running a full set of Bezerker gear without me needing to put a single point into the precision stat on any of my weapons, trinkets or armour.

My Ranger in full bezerker gear has 2,145 precision giving him a base total of 59,52% Crit chance.. that's 10.38% crit chance lower than what my Necromancer can get without any gear precision stat investment at all.Granted the Ranger can self apply Fury and Might and my Necro build can't but it can get that from allies easily and often.The difference comes down to Ferocity and that's the only real weak point of the build, high crit chance but low ferocity crit damage.

It's still enough to make a noticable difference when I am operating at my peak though.High crit chance and raw power combined with high toughness and health.. and add to that a significant amount of constant incoming healing.No other class in Gw2 can function like that.. i've tried to replicate it in various ways on most classes but none of them can gain the same level of tank, damage and sustain at the same time.. Necro is the only class capable of it thanks to it's unique traits and skills.

The way the build works essentially means I am more or less running the exclusively PVP Paladin stat set in PvE and WvW.Power, Precision Main - Toughness, Vitality minor..Only i'm doing it with higher stats than the Paladin stats can provide.

Paladin Amulet + Superior Rune of Dolyak2050 Power2050 Precision (55.00% Crit chance, easily caps 100% crit chance with Vulnerability)1860 Toughness1660 Vitality (25,812 health, 17,811 Life Force)

My PvE Build + Superior Rune of Dolyak2381 Power1000 base precision (5% crit chance) +250 Precision Sigil (19,90% Crit chance) + Decimate defences Vulnerability (69,90% Crit chance)2261 Toughness2061 Vitality (29,822 health, 20,578 life force)

2 Primary stats are defensive yes but with maxed sigil and Decimate Defenses taking advantage of 25 Vulnerability it technically remains as offensive as it is defensive since when my crit chance is at 69,90% i'm effectively functioning as if my precision stat is 2384 which is higher than my base toughness, vitality and power.Factor in additional Toughness from traits though my two main stats are typically Power and Toughness.. but when operating at my peak they are Toughness and Precision.So either way my two highest stats at any one time are one offensive and one defensive, so I cannot be as you said "ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability" when the offensive capabilities of the build are equally present.If anything at best combining Power/Precision against Toughness/Vitality i'm technically more offenisve than defensive stat wise.

did you try mirage, or revenant of any kind with a mace, with runes of tormenting? that heals as much as lifesteal and you proc it every hit

Yep, I have a Hybrid Mace/Axe Renegade build with Sigil and Runes of tormenting, the heals are nothing close to the Necromancers lifesteal though.Necro Dagger is faster and lifesteals on hit as well as the big skill 2 heal, plus Revenant doesn't have 5-12 minions feeding it lifesteal either.

Yeah but did you try Mallyx's AoE skill + the torment on chill trait? you apply torment ( in an AoE) really fast

I will have to check to be sure but I think so.I don't use my Revenant all that much tbh but It is built to maximize torment so I probably do use it considering each traitline is kind of defined to a legend and I do use Mallyx.

Regarding the whole lifesteal thing, The existence of the rune of tormenting states lifesteal needs work, as lifesteal is on the following: Necromancer, Thief, Revenant.Torment is on the following: Warrior, Revenant, Thief, Mesmer, Necromancer. This means that the Rune of Tormenting for Condition-centric builds is much better than lifesteal as in this list, professions like revenant get a TON of torment. On the flip side, Lifesteal is NOT good for Crit-centric builds because it CANNOT CRIT, so it is Lacklustre in both condition and crit, which having a replacement in condition. The only professions that should have Lifesteal as a central point are Necromancer and Revenants, these do as a "central" idea, however due to the lack of any real benefit to taking lifesteal over some other trait ( e.g. taking lifesteal wells over Transfusion, or taking Assassin's Annihilation over Swift Termination), If lifesteal was an entire mechanic that could be built around, like torment for revenants etc, then I feel that it'd be in a much better place.

I guess it depends on how you use it, I can't speak for lifesteal wells as i've never tried it but playing for max Minions gives a ton of lifesteal so if they did improve it, give it crits etc it would make my minion build horribly OP..Tanky MM's are probably the reason lifesteal is what it is atm, it's so easy to stack it with regen, and regular HP tics from food and runes that the sustain potential is massive even without investing in healing power.

But the problem is, this only works in open world pve.But even here, meta events do have timersHigher tier fractals? Do you wanna stay in there forever?Raids? - there are hard enrage encounters that just kill you if you don't kill them in timeSpvp?- Lackluster bad buildWvw? - same as spvp

I don't think this should be balanced around open world pve, even though, this is definitely the gamemode, that most people are playing.

[InsaneQR.7412]

I'd rather wnat to see it solely scaling with healing power but like really hard.So you deal dmg as a support character which would be really like a necro thing. It cannot crit. But it could give necros a niche as supports because they deal more dmg than the average support you would choose and they could run stuff like harrier to buff allies as well.

[Teratus.2859]

@Nimon.7840 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

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@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:Lifesteal is in absolutely no way underwhelming in this game..

If you play even a slightly durable minion master with blood magic traitline you would know that lifesteal is amazing.

If they changed it to benefit from power and crits like you suggested it would literally make one of my favorite builds unkillable.

If they made lifesteal more powerful like that you'd have Necro MM's AFK farming world bosses and tons of other group events as the minion lifesteal would easily be enough to outheal many of those more powerful creatures.

one main issue I have is: Things seem to basically "require" other things to even function normally, lifesteal as it is now, is more "50-100 healing a hit" which is Almost nothing when you consider necromancers have 20-30,000 health and very low armour, so healing already has a lower "effect" on necromancers as Healing benefits from toughness over vitality.

the build you mention I assume is a Blood magic and Death magic thing, but as death magic outside of some general use PvE builds is REALLY bad it doesn't really mean much if you're "unkillable" when you do very low damage, Minions don't benefit from your power etc at all and for you to get any noticeable healing from it you need healing power or to hit lots of things fast: reworking lifesteal would mean reworking traits too, so the "unkillable" build wouldn't be unkillable since it'd be tweaked from a balance standpoint, although having said that necromancers need something they excel in because they have nothing atm, Healing is druid, condition is Mirage, tankinees is spellbreaker, Power is basically anything.

Blood, Death, Reaper yes, used to use Soul Reaping pre HoT.Designed largely around maximizing minions and heal sustain.. it's very hard to kill in PvE and prior to minion changes and the addition of Elite specs it was really hard to kill in PvP too pre HoT.I don't actually use Healing power (except the 150 I get from Last rites).. I use Soldier stats so my damage isn't as terrible as you might expect neither is the incoming healing.In many fights I can maintain around 10-11 minions sometimes 12 depending on what i'm running and how many enemies are around and that does add up both in damage and in incoming life steal.Sure I'm not going to win any DPS awards or anything but it's good enough to go toe to toe with just about anything solo.

Adding to that I have access to regen on dodge (Lesser Mark of Blood) and protection when leaving shroud (Beyond the Veil)Sometimes I use Death Nova for more minions = more lifesteal + more damage and tons of poisonfields when they die :D or Corrupter's Fervor for more toughness.I get more toughness per minion with Flesh of the Master amd More damage from minions and they take conditions with Necromantic Corruption.Minion and Player Lifesteal with Vampiric and Vampiric Pressence as well as stopping ally bleedout and being able to pull rez them in shroud.

Then in Reaper line I have lifesteal on shout + reduced cooldown for Rise per target, 15% damage increase to chilled foes which is easy to exploit with focus 5, Reaper Shroud and GS auto and lastly I get 300 ferocity and quickness while in shroud which goes really nicely with Decimate Defences 2% crit chance per stack of Vulnerability on foes allowing me to get 50% crit chance without needing any precision stat in the build at all.I can get more ferocity and power from food etc too if I want extra damage as well as more crits from Superior Sigil of Preception(25 stacks combined with 25 stacks of Vulnerability = 66.90% Crit chance without a single investment in precision)

Contributing to the healing factor as well I have constant health regen from Superior Rune of the Dolyak and I AoE heal on crits with Superior Sigil of Water.

So as you can see I have a lot of constant incoming healing from multiple sources mostly life steal from on average 10ish minions. (can also get more from food)Likewise multiple pockets of damage being done by myself, minions and poison fields caused by their death which are numerous thanks to timegated minions I get when I kill stuff and the minions summoned with Rise.I can get almost 70% crit chance without precision (which is ridiculous)My stats bounce around 2,382 Power + 2,340-2,500 Toughness depending on how many minions I have (2660 in shroud) which gives me a max Armor rating of 3,307- 3,500 (3600+ in shroud) Not so "very low" after all is it :PCombine that with 29,812 base Hp (30K + with food) and 20,571 Life force and you can see what I mean when I say lifesteal is already capable of making you nearly unkillable as it is without needing to completely sacrifice your damage.

Functions great as a solo build and benefits from a moderate damage buff when playing with others thanks to 25 vulnerability and perma chill being extremely easy to maintan with a small group.Dagger 2 even functions as a main healing skill thanks to it's bigger heal and 6 second shorter cooldown than sacrificing the Blood Fiend.

I highly recommend giving it a try sometime if you like the power tank playstyle, more than happy to give you the exact build I use, all traits, gear etc.It's never going to be best DPS meta or anything but it's still very capable, definitely the kind of build you use to help people out when they get in over their heads which is a fun pastime for me.Oh yeah the Shroud skill 4 does AoE healing too, I've managed to get upwards of 6K AoE healing on it in some situations (around 4-5K normally) which is a nice boon for fractals and stuff, I've saved a lot of people with this build over the years not to mention being the main reason my fractal pug group hasn't wiped multiple times in the same encounter ^^

It is very low since you're ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability.

I'm not though.As I said it's main stat is power not toughness and despite no stat investment I can still hit 70% crit chance quite often.That's why I call it a Power Tank not just a Tank.

You'll just have to try it yourself to understand, it's by far the best build I've used that you could call a highly proficient Jack of all trades.It could be more tanky, it could be more dps focused, could be more healing focused but it sits nicely in the middle being respectably competent at all 3.I've attempted to make similar builds on other classes but they simply cannot replicate the same level of tankyness while possessing the same level of damage output and sustain, that's mainly where the minions and lifesteal come in and Necro is the only class that can use summons to that effect.There are ways to make other classes play Jack of all trade playstyles but they cannot compete with the Necromancer on that front.. not even remotely close.

Two of your stats are defensive, meaning the MAJORITY of you stats are defensive. that makes it Defensive.

Defensive yes but that's not what you said.You said i'm "ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability." and that's not true.

I may only be using 3 defined stats on my gear.. Power(Main), Toughness and Vitality but my traits and skills give me the ability to function as a character that's utalizing 4 different stats at high investment, therefore i'm not entirely specced for toughness/survivability.The 69.90% Crit chance I can get upto through the combination of my Sigil stacks and the enemies applied Vulnerability (which like I said is almost constantly 25 in any group based content) effectively means that my build can operate with more base crit chance than a character running a full set of Bezerker gear without me needing to put a single point into the precision stat on any of my weapons, trinkets or armour.

My Ranger in full bezerker gear has 2,145 precision giving him a base total of 59,52% Crit chance.. that's 10.38% crit chance lower than what my Necromancer can get without any gear precision stat investment at all.Granted the Ranger can self apply Fury and Might and my Necro build can't but it can get that from allies easily and often.The difference comes down to Ferocity and that's the only real weak point of the build, high crit chance but low ferocity crit damage.

It's still enough to make a noticable difference when I am operating at my peak though.High crit chance and raw power combined with high toughness and health.. and add to that a significant amount of constant incoming healing.No other class in Gw2 can function like that.. i've tried to replicate it in various ways on most classes but none of them can gain the same level of tank, damage and sustain at the same time.. Necro is the only class capable of it thanks to it's unique traits and skills.

The way the build works essentially means I am more or less running the exclusively PVP Paladin stat set in PvE and WvW.Power, Precision Main - Toughness, Vitality minor..Only i'm doing it with higher stats than the Paladin stats can provide.

Paladin Amulet + Superior Rune of Dolyak2050 Power2050 Precision (55.00% Crit chance, easily caps 100% crit chance with Vulnerability)1860 Toughness1660 Vitality (25,812 health, 17,811 Life Force)

My PvE Build + Superior Rune of Dolyak2381 Power1000 base precision (5% crit chance) +250 Precision Sigil (19,90% Crit chance) + Decimate defences Vulnerability (69,90% Crit chance)2261 Toughness2061 Vitality (29,822 health, 20,578 life force)

2 Primary stats are defensive yes but with maxed sigil and Decimate Defenses taking advantage of 25 Vulnerability it technically remains as offensive as it is defensive since when my crit chance is at 69,90% i'm effectively functioning as if my precision stat is 2384 which is higher than my base toughness, vitality and power.Factor in additional Toughness from traits though my two main stats are typically Power and Toughness.. but when operating at my peak they are Toughness and Precision.So either way my two highest stats at any one time are one offensive and one defensive, so I cannot be as you said "ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability" when the offensive capabilities of the build are equally present.If anything at best combining Power/Precision against Toughness/Vitality i'm technically more offenisve than defensive stat wise.

did you try mirage, or revenant of any kind with a mace, with runes of tormenting? that heals as much as lifesteal and you proc it every hit

Yep, I have a Hybrid Mace/Axe Renegade build with Sigil and Runes of tormenting, the heals are nothing close to the Necromancers lifesteal though.Necro Dagger is faster and lifesteals on hit as well as the big skill 2 heal, plus Revenant doesn't have 5-12 minions feeding it lifesteal either.

Yeah but did you try Mallyx's AoE skill + the torment on chill trait? you apply torment ( in an AoE) really fast

I will have to check to be sure but I think so.I don't use my Revenant all that much tbh but It is built to maximize torment so I probably do use it considering each traitline is kind of defined to a legend and I do use Mallyx.

Regarding the whole lifesteal thing, The existence of the rune of tormenting states lifesteal needs work, as lifesteal is on the following: Necromancer, Thief, Revenant.Torment is on the following: Warrior, Revenant, Thief, Mesmer, Necromancer. This means that the Rune of Tormenting for Condition-centric builds is much better than lifesteal as in this list, professions like revenant get a TON of torment. On the flip side, Lifesteal is NOT good for Crit-centric builds because it CANNOT CRIT, so it is Lacklustre in both condition and crit, which having a replacement in condition. The only professions that should have Lifesteal as a central point are Necromancer and Revenants, these do as a "central" idea, however due to the lack of any real benefit to taking lifesteal over some other trait ( e.g. taking lifesteal wells over Transfusion, or taking Assassin's Annihilation over Swift Termination), If lifesteal was an entire mechanic that could be built around, like torment for revenants etc, then I feel that it'd be in a much better place.

I guess it depends on how you use it, I can't speak for lifesteal wells as i've never tried it but playing for max Minions gives a ton of lifesteal so if they did improve it, give it crits etc it would make my minion build horribly OP..Tanky MM's are probably the reason lifesteal is what it is atm, it's so easy to stack it with regen, and regular HP tics from food and runes that the sustain potential is massive even without investing in healing power.

But the problem is, this only works in open world pve.But even here, meta events do have timersHigher tier fractals? Do you wanna stay in there forever?Raids? - there are hard enrage encounters that just kill you if you don't kill them in timeSpvp?- Lackluster bad buildWvw? - same as spvp

I don't think this should be balanced around open world pve, even though, this is definitely the gamemode, that most people are playing.

It used to work fine in PvP until elite specs came along and it became far too easy to wipe out a horde of minions in a few seconds, back when I first made a minion lifesteal build I was able to easily 1v2 and 1v3 in some cases with it despite being a pvp noob.I had my fun while I could but the issue isn't so much with lifesteal in pvp it's paper mache minions.Still though i'm a big advocate for splitting PvE away from PvP so lifesteal changes in PvP are more than welcome providing they don't effect PvE.

I don't run fractals all that often tbh but when I do it's less about rewards and more about fun.In that sense I prefer the more chillout dungeon like experience of lower level fractals than the more chaotic higher levels.I get more satisfaction out of helping people in lower levels than I do with getting rewards for the high level stuff.

I don't care for raids, for the most part raids encourage the typical max DPS meta crap that I neither find fun or interesting to play.I don't like having my playstyle or build dictated by other people so I just avoid raid content unless I can muster together a group of friends who are more interested in running them for fun.

I havent used minions or Necro much in WvW tbh but I've been ambushed a few times running my build there which hasn't gone well for my would be attacker.My build has seen very little WvW action though so i don't have enough experience to really give you a thumbs up or down on how useful it is there.When I do go into WvW I usually run a Ranger instead and follow a group around since that provides me a lot more kills and captures.

Meta Event timers are not an issue tbh.I've run many group events, bounties and other timed event content with the build both in groups and solo without much trouble.There are a few mechanics here and there which can cause some trouble for me solo such as group event bosses that can heal or summon healing minions or wells etc.In those situations the enemy can outsustain my damage and I can outsustain him so it becomes an immovable object vs an unstoppable force scenario lolI still do enough damage to beat mostly all timers though providing the enemy cannot outsustain me so timed PvE content isn't an issue, specially when there are a few other people around.For the most part there will always be a couple of random people joining the frey and that's usually more than enough DPS to guarantee success providing they stay alive, and one of the other benefits of the build is that with the AoE healing, pulling downed and stopping bleedout combined with being so hard to kill, it's very easy to keep a small group of people alive.. specially if they're in my party or group so I can see their health and status.Someone can fall in a big AoE ring guaranteing their death and I can pull them out of it and revive them, but if the need arises I can also jump right into the ring and revive them since I can tank the damage and both the minions and passive regen will keep feeding me health while I do it.Even if the downed player is taking enough damage to stall out my revive attempt the AoE will end before I take any significant damage and I can usually heal it right back up with a Dagger 2 anyway.

[Nimon.7840]

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@Kuulpb.5412 said:

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@Teratus.2859 said:Lifesteal is in absolutely no way underwhelming in this game..

If you play even a slightly durable minion master with blood magic traitline you would know that lifesteal is amazing.

If they changed it to benefit from power and crits like you suggested it would literally make one of my favorite builds unkillable.

If they made lifesteal more powerful like that you'd have Necro MM's AFK farming world bosses and tons of other group events as the minion lifesteal would easily be enough to outheal many of those more powerful creatures.

one main issue I have is: Things seem to basically "require" other things to even function normally, lifesteal as it is now, is more "50-100 healing a hit" which is Almost nothing when you consider necromancers have 20-30,000 health and very low armour, so healing already has a lower "effect" on necromancers as Healing benefits from toughness over vitality.

the build you mention I assume is a Blood magic and Death magic thing, but as death magic outside of some general use PvE builds is REALLY bad it doesn't really mean much if you're "unkillable" when you do very low damage, Minions don't benefit from your power etc at all and for you to get any noticeable healing from it you need healing power or to hit lots of things fast: reworking lifesteal would mean reworking traits too, so the "unkillable" build wouldn't be unkillable since it'd be tweaked from a balance standpoint, although having said that necromancers need something they excel in because they have nothing atm, Healing is druid, condition is Mirage, tankinees is spellbreaker, Power is basically anything.

Blood, Death, Reaper yes, used to use Soul Reaping pre HoT.Designed largely around maximizing minions and heal sustain.. it's very hard to kill in PvE and prior to minion changes and the addition of Elite specs it was really hard to kill in PvP too pre HoT.I don't actually use Healing power (except the 150 I get from Last rites).. I use Soldier stats so my damage isn't as terrible as you might expect neither is the incoming healing.In many fights I can maintain around 10-11 minions sometimes 12 depending on what i'm running and how many enemies are around and that does add up both in damage and in incoming life steal.Sure I'm not going to win any DPS awards or anything but it's good enough to go toe to toe with just about anything solo.

Adding to that I have access to regen on dodge (Lesser Mark of Blood) and protection when leaving shroud (Beyond the Veil)Sometimes I use Death Nova for more minions = more lifesteal + more damage and tons of poisonfields when they die :D or Corrupter's Fervor for more toughness.I get more toughness per minion with Flesh of the Master amd More damage from minions and they take conditions with Necromantic Corruption.Minion and Player Lifesteal with Vampiric and Vampiric Pressence as well as stopping ally bleedout and being able to pull rez them in shroud.

Then in Reaper line I have lifesteal on shout + reduced cooldown for Rise per target, 15% damage increase to chilled foes which is easy to exploit with focus 5, Reaper Shroud and GS auto and lastly I get 300 ferocity and quickness while in shroud which goes really nicely with Decimate Defences 2% crit chance per stack of Vulnerability on foes allowing me to get 50% crit chance without needing any precision stat in the build at all.I can get more ferocity and power from food etc too if I want extra damage as well as more crits from Superior Sigil of Preception(25 stacks combined with 25 stacks of Vulnerability = 66.90% Crit chance without a single investment in precision)

Contributing to the healing factor as well I have constant health regen from Superior Rune of the Dolyak and I AoE heal on crits with Superior Sigil of Water.

So as you can see I have a lot of constant incoming healing from multiple sources mostly life steal from on average 10ish minions. (can also get more from food)Likewise multiple pockets of damage being done by myself, minions and poison fields caused by their death which are numerous thanks to timegated minions I get when I kill stuff and the minions summoned with Rise.I can get almost 70% crit chance without precision (which is ridiculous)My stats bounce around 2,382 Power + 2,340-2,500 Toughness depending on how many minions I have (2660 in shroud) which gives me a max Armor rating of 3,307- 3,500 (3600+ in shroud) Not so "very low" after all is it :PCombine that with 29,812 base Hp (30K + with food) and 20,571 Life force and you can see what I mean when I say lifesteal is already capable of making you nearly unkillable as it is without needing to completely sacrifice your damage.

Functions great as a solo build and benefits from a moderate damage buff when playing with others thanks to 25 vulnerability and perma chill being extremely easy to maintan with a small group.Dagger 2 even functions as a main healing skill thanks to it's bigger heal and 6 second shorter cooldown than sacrificing the Blood Fiend.

I highly recommend giving it a try sometime if you like the power tank playstyle, more than happy to give you the exact build I use, all traits, gear etc.It's never going to be best DPS meta or anything but it's still very capable, definitely the kind of build you use to help people out when they get in over their heads which is a fun pastime for me.Oh yeah the Shroud skill 4 does AoE healing too, I've managed to get upwards of 6K AoE healing on it in some situations (around 4-5K normally) which is a nice boon for fractals and stuff, I've saved a lot of people with this build over the years not to mention being the main reason my fractal pug group hasn't wiped multiple times in the same encounter ^^

It is very low since you're ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability.

I'm not though.As I said it's main stat is power not toughness and despite no stat investment I can still hit 70% crit chance quite often.That's why I call it a Power Tank not just a Tank.

You'll just have to try it yourself to understand, it's by far the best build I've used that you could call a highly proficient Jack of all trades.It could be more tanky, it could be more dps focused, could be more healing focused but it sits nicely in the middle being respectably competent at all 3.I've attempted to make similar builds on other classes but they simply cannot replicate the same level of tankyness while possessing the same level of damage output and sustain, that's mainly where the minions and lifesteal come in and Necro is the only class that can use summons to that effect.There are ways to make other classes play Jack of all trade playstyles but they cannot compete with the Necromancer on that front.. not even remotely close.

Two of your stats are defensive, meaning the MAJORITY of you stats are defensive. that makes it Defensive.

Defensive yes but that's not what you said.You said i'm "ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability." and that's not true.

I may only be using 3 defined stats on my gear.. Power(Main), Toughness and Vitality but my traits and skills give me the ability to function as a character that's utalizing 4 different stats at high investment, therefore i'm not entirely specced for toughness/survivability.The 69.90% Crit chance I can get upto through the combination of my Sigil stacks and the enemies applied Vulnerability (which like I said is almost constantly 25 in any group based content) effectively means that my build can operate with more base crit chance than a character running a full set of Bezerker gear without me needing to put a single point into the precision stat on any of my weapons, trinkets or armour.

My Ranger in full bezerker gear has 2,145 precision giving him a base total of 59,52% Crit chance.. that's 10.38% crit chance lower than what my Necromancer can get without any gear precision stat investment at all.Granted the Ranger can self apply Fury and Might and my Necro build can't but it can get that from allies easily and often.The difference comes down to Ferocity and that's the only real weak point of the build, high crit chance but low ferocity crit damage.

It's still enough to make a noticable difference when I am operating at my peak though.High crit chance and raw power combined with high toughness and health.. and add to that a significant amount of constant incoming healing.No other class in Gw2 can function like that.. i've tried to replicate it in various ways on most classes but none of them can gain the same level of tank, damage and sustain at the same time.. Necro is the only class capable of it thanks to it's unique traits and skills.

The way the build works essentially means I am more or less running the exclusively PVP Paladin stat set in PvE and WvW.Power, Precision Main - Toughness, Vitality minor..Only i'm doing it with higher stats than the Paladin stats can provide.

Paladin Amulet + Superior Rune of Dolyak2050 Power2050 Precision (55.00% Crit chance, easily caps 100% crit chance with Vulnerability)1860 Toughness1660 Vitality (25,812 health, 17,811 Life Force)

My PvE Build + Superior Rune of Dolyak2381 Power1000 base precision (5% crit chance) +250 Precision Sigil (19,90% Crit chance) + Decimate defences Vulnerability (69,90% Crit chance)2261 Toughness2061 Vitality (29,822 health, 20,578 life force)

2 Primary stats are defensive yes but with maxed sigil and Decimate Defenses taking advantage of 25 Vulnerability it technically remains as offensive as it is defensive since when my crit chance is at 69,90% i'm effectively functioning as if my precision stat is 2384 which is higher than my base toughness, vitality and power.Factor in additional Toughness from traits though my two main stats are typically Power and Toughness.. but when operating at my peak they are Toughness and Precision.So either way my two highest stats at any one time are one offensive and one defensive, so I cannot be as you said "ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability" when the offensive capabilities of the build are equally present.If anything at best combining Power/Precision against Toughness/Vitality i'm technically more offenisve than defensive stat wise.

did you try mirage, or revenant of any kind with a mace, with runes of tormenting? that heals as much as lifesteal and you proc it every hit

Yep, I have a Hybrid Mace/Axe Renegade build with Sigil and Runes of tormenting, the heals are nothing close to the Necromancers lifesteal though.Necro Dagger is faster and lifesteals on hit as well as the big skill 2 heal, plus Revenant doesn't have 5-12 minions feeding it lifesteal either.

Yeah but did you try Mallyx's AoE skill + the torment on chill trait? you apply torment ( in an AoE) really fast

I will have to check to be sure but I think so.I don't use my Revenant all that much tbh but It is built to maximize torment so I probably do use it considering each traitline is kind of defined to a legend and I do use Mallyx.

Regarding the whole lifesteal thing, The existence of the rune of tormenting states lifesteal needs work, as lifesteal is on the following: Necromancer, Thief, Revenant.Torment is on the following: Warrior, Revenant, Thief, Mesmer, Necromancer. This means that the Rune of Tormenting for Condition-centric builds is much better than lifesteal as in this list, professions like revenant get a TON of torment. On the flip side, Lifesteal is NOT good for Crit-centric builds because it CANNOT CRIT, so it is Lacklustre in both condition and crit, which having a replacement in condition. The only professions that should have Lifesteal as a central point are Necromancer and Revenants, these do as a "central" idea, however due to the lack of any real benefit to taking lifesteal over some other trait ( e.g. taking lifesteal wells over Transfusion, or taking Assassin's Annihilation over Swift Termination), If lifesteal was an entire mechanic that could be built around, like torment for revenants etc, then I feel that it'd be in a much better place.

I guess it depends on how you use it, I can't speak for lifesteal wells as i've never tried it but playing for max Minions gives a ton of lifesteal so if they did improve it, give it crits etc it would make my minion build horribly OP..Tanky MM's are probably the reason lifesteal is what it is atm, it's so easy to stack it with regen, and regular HP tics from food and runes that the sustain potential is massive even without investing in healing power.

But the problem is, this only works in open world pve.But even here, meta events do have timersHigher tier fractals? Do you wanna stay in there forever?Raids? - there are hard enrage encounters that just kill you if you don't kill them in timeSpvp?- Lackluster bad buildWvw? - same as spvp

I don't think this should be balanced around open world pve, even though, this is definitely the gamemode, that most people are playing.

It used to work fine in PvP until elite specs came along and it became far too easy to wipe out a horde of minions in a few seconds, back when I first made a minion lifesteal build I was able to easily 1v2 and 1v3 in some cases with it despite being a pvp noob.I had my fun while I could but the issue isn't so much with lifesteal in pvp it's paper mache minions.Still though i'm a big advocate for splitting PvE away from PvP so lifesteal changes in PvP are more than welcome providing they don't effect PvE.

I don't run fractals all that often tbh but when I do it's less about rewards and more about fun.In that sense I prefer the more chillout dungeon like experience of lower level fractals than the more chaotic higher levels.I get more satisfaction out of helping people in lower levels than I do with getting rewards for the high level stuff.

I don't care for raids, for the most part raids encourage the typical max DPS meta kitten that I neither find fun or interesting to play.I don't like having my playstyle or build dictated by other people so I just avoid raid content unless I can muster together a group of friends who are more interested in running them for fun.

I havent used minions or Necro much in WvW tbh but I've been ambushed a few times running my build there which hasn't gone well for my would be attacker.My build has seen very little WvW action though so i don't have enough experience to really give you a thumbs up or down on how useful it is there.When I do go into WvW I usually run a Ranger instead and follow a group around since that provides me a lot more kills and captures.

Meta Event timers are not an issue tbh.I've run many group events, bounties and other timed event content with the build both in groups and solo without much trouble.

If there's only one or two necromancer running minion master sure. No problem.But imagine all people running minion master. You wouldn't be able to clear chak gerent and also it would be laggy as hell.

There are a few mechanics here and there which can cause some trouble for me solo such as group event bosses that can heal or summon healing minions or wells etc.In those situations the enemy can outsustain my damage and I can outsustain him so it becomes an immovable object vs an unstoppable force scenario lolI still do enough damage to beat mostly all timers though providing the enemy cannot outsustain me so timed PvE content isn't an issue, specially when there are a few other people around.For the most part there will always be a couple of random people joining the frey and that's usually more than enough DPS to guarantee success providing they stay alive, and one of the other benefits of the build is that with the AoE healing, pulling downed and stopping bleedout combined with being so hard to kill, it's very easy to keep a small group of people alive.. specially if they're in my party or group so I can see their health and status.Someone can fall in a big AoE ring guaranteing their death and I can pull them out of it and revive them, but if the need arises I can also jump right into the ring and revive them since I can tank the damage and both the minions and passive regen will keep feeding me health while I do it.Even if the downed player is taking enough damage to stall out my revive attempt the AoE will end before I take any significant damage and I can usually heal it right back up with a Dagger 2 anyway.

[Teratus.2859]

@Nimon.7840 said:

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@Kuulpb.5412 said:

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@Teratus.2859 said:

@Kuulpb.5412 said:

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@Kuulpb.5412 said:

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@Kuulpb.5412 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:Lifesteal is in absolutely no way underwhelming in this game..

If you play even a slightly durable minion master with blood magic traitline you would know that lifesteal is amazing.

If they changed it to benefit from power and crits like you suggested it would literally make one of my favorite builds unkillable.

If they made lifesteal more powerful like that you'd have Necro MM's AFK farming world bosses and tons of other group events as the minion lifesteal would easily be enough to outheal many of those more powerful creatures.

one main issue I have is: Things seem to basically "require" other things to even function normally, lifesteal as it is now, is more "50-100 healing a hit" which is Almost nothing when you consider necromancers have 20-30,000 health and very low armour, so healing already has a lower "effect" on necromancers as Healing benefits from toughness over vitality.

the build you mention I assume is a Blood magic and Death magic thing, but as death magic outside of some general use PvE builds is REALLY bad it doesn't really mean much if you're "unkillable" when you do very low damage, Minions don't benefit from your power etc at all and for you to get any noticeable healing from it you need healing power or to hit lots of things fast: reworking lifesteal would mean reworking traits too, so the "unkillable" build wouldn't be unkillable since it'd be tweaked from a balance standpoint, although having said that necromancers need something they excel in because they have nothing atm, Healing is druid, condition is Mirage, tankinees is spellbreaker, Power is basically anything.

Blood, Death, Reaper yes, used to use Soul Reaping pre HoT.Designed largely around maximizing minions and heal sustain.. it's very hard to kill in PvE and prior to minion changes and the addition of Elite specs it was really hard to kill in PvP too pre HoT.I don't actually use Healing power (except the 150 I get from Last rites).. I use Soldier stats so my damage isn't as terrible as you might expect neither is the incoming healing.In many fights I can maintain around 10-11 minions sometimes 12 depending on what i'm running and how many enemies are around and that does add up both in damage and in incoming life steal.Sure I'm not going to win any DPS awards or anything but it's good enough to go toe to toe with just about anything solo.

Adding to that I have access to regen on dodge (Lesser Mark of Blood) and protection when leaving shroud (Beyond the Veil)Sometimes I use Death Nova for more minions = more lifesteal + more damage and tons of poisonfields when they die :D or Corrupter's Fervor for more toughness.I get more toughness per minion with Flesh of the Master amd More damage from minions and they take conditions with Necromantic Corruption.Minion and Player Lifesteal with Vampiric and Vampiric Pressence as well as stopping ally bleedout and being able to pull rez them in shroud.

Then in Reaper line I have lifesteal on shout + reduced cooldown for Rise per target, 15% damage increase to chilled foes which is easy to exploit with focus 5, Reaper Shroud and GS auto and lastly I get 300 ferocity and quickness while in shroud which goes really nicely with Decimate Defences 2% crit chance per stack of Vulnerability on foes allowing me to get 50% crit chance without needing any precision stat in the build at all.I can get more ferocity and power from food etc too if I want extra damage as well as more crits from Superior Sigil of Preception(25 stacks combined with 25 stacks of Vulnerability = 66.90% Crit chance without a single investment in precision)

Contributing to the healing factor as well I have constant health regen from Superior Rune of the Dolyak and I AoE heal on crits with Superior Sigil of Water.

So as you can see I have a lot of constant incoming healing from multiple sources mostly life steal from on average 10ish minions. (can also get more from food)Likewise multiple pockets of damage being done by myself, minions and poison fields caused by their death which are numerous thanks to timegated minions I get when I kill stuff and the minions summoned with Rise.I can get almost 70% crit chance without precision (which is ridiculous)My stats bounce around 2,382 Power + 2,340-2,500 Toughness depending on how many minions I have (2660 in shroud) which gives me a max Armor rating of 3,307- 3,500 (3600+ in shroud) Not so "very low" after all is it :PCombine that with 29,812 base Hp (30K + with food) and 20,571 Life force and you can see what I mean when I say lifesteal is already capable of making you nearly unkillable as it is without needing to completely sacrifice your damage.

Functions great as a solo build and benefits from a moderate damage buff when playing with others thanks to 25 vulnerability and perma chill being extremely easy to maintan with a small group.Dagger 2 even functions as a main healing skill thanks to it's bigger heal and 6 second shorter cooldown than sacrificing the Blood Fiend.

I highly recommend giving it a try sometime if you like the power tank playstyle, more than happy to give you the exact build I use, all traits, gear etc.It's never going to be best DPS meta or anything but it's still very capable, definitely the kind of build you use to help people out when they get in over their heads which is a fun pastime for me.Oh yeah the Shroud skill 4 does AoE healing too, I've managed to get upwards of 6K AoE healing on it in some situations (around 4-5K normally) which is a nice boon for fractals and stuff, I've saved a lot of people with this build over the years not to mention being the main reason my fractal pug group hasn't wiped multiple times in the same encounter ^^

It is very low since you're ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability.

I'm not though.As I said it's main stat is power not toughness and despite no stat investment I can still hit 70% crit chance quite often.That's why I call it a Power Tank not just a Tank.

You'll just have to try it yourself to understand, it's by far the best build I've used that you could call a highly proficient Jack of all trades.It could be more tanky, it could be more dps focused, could be more healing focused but it sits nicely in the middle being respectably competent at all 3.I've attempted to make similar builds on other classes but they simply cannot replicate the same level of tankyness while possessing the same level of damage output and sustain, that's mainly where the minions and lifesteal come in and Necro is the only class that can use summons to that effect.There are ways to make other classes play Jack of all trade playstyles but they cannot compete with the Necromancer on that front.. not even remotely close.

Two of your stats are defensive, meaning the MAJORITY of you stats are defensive. that makes it Defensive.

Defensive yes but that's not what you said.You said i'm "ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability." and that's not true.

I may only be using 3 defined stats on my gear.. Power(Main), Toughness and Vitality but my traits and skills give me the ability to function as a character that's utalizing 4 different stats at high investment, therefore i'm not entirely specced for toughness/survivability.The 69.90% Crit chance I can get upto through the combination of my Sigil stacks and the enemies applied Vulnerability (which like I said is almost constantly 25 in any group based content) effectively means that my build can operate with more base crit chance than a character running a full set of Bezerker gear without me needing to put a single point into the precision stat on any of my weapons, trinkets or armour.

My Ranger in full bezerker gear has 2,145 precision giving him a base total of 59,52% Crit chance.. that's 10.38% crit chance lower than what my Necromancer can get without any gear precision stat investment at all.Granted the Ranger can self apply Fury and Might and my Necro build can't but it can get that from allies easily and often.The difference comes down to Ferocity and that's the only real weak point of the build, high crit chance but low ferocity crit damage.

It's still enough to make a noticable difference when I am operating at my peak though.High crit chance and raw power combined with high toughness and health.. and add to that a significant amount of constant incoming healing.No other class in Gw2 can function like that.. i've tried to replicate it in various ways on most classes but none of them can gain the same level of tank, damage and sustain at the same time.. Necro is the only class capable of it thanks to it's unique traits and skills.

The way the build works essentially means I am more or less running the exclusively PVP Paladin stat set in PvE and WvW.Power, Precision Main - Toughness, Vitality minor..Only i'm doing it with higher stats than the Paladin stats can provide.

Paladin Amulet + Superior Rune of Dolyak2050 Power2050 Precision (55.00% Crit chance, easily caps 100% crit chance with Vulnerability)1860 Toughness1660 Vitality (25,812 health, 17,811 Life Force)

My PvE Build + Superior Rune of Dolyak2381 Power1000 base precision (5% crit chance) +250 Precision Sigil (19,90% Crit chance) + Decimate defences Vulnerability (69,90% Crit chance)2261 Toughness2061 Vitality (29,822 health, 20,578 life force)

2 Primary stats are defensive yes but with maxed sigil and Decimate Defenses taking advantage of 25 Vulnerability it technically remains as offensive as it is defensive since when my crit chance is at 69,90% i'm effectively functioning as if my precision stat is 2384 which is higher than my base toughness, vitality and power.Factor in additional Toughness from traits though my two main stats are typically Power and Toughness.. but when operating at my peak they are Toughness and Precision.So either way my two highest stats at any one time are one offensive and one defensive, so I cannot be as you said "ENTIRELY specced for toughness/survivability" when the offensive capabilities of the build are equally present.If anything at best combining Power/Precision against Toughness/Vitality i'm technically more offenisve than defensive stat wise.

did you try mirage, or revenant of any kind with a mace, with runes of tormenting? that heals as much as lifesteal and you proc it every hit

Yep, I have a Hybrid Mace/Axe Renegade build with Sigil and Runes of tormenting, the heals are nothing close to the Necromancers lifesteal though.Necro Dagger is faster and lifesteals on hit as well as the big skill 2 heal, plus Revenant doesn't have 5-12 minions feeding it lifesteal either.

Yeah but did you try Mallyx's AoE skill + the torment on chill trait? you apply torment ( in an AoE) really fast

I will have to check to be sure but I think so.I don't use my Revenant all that much tbh but It is built to maximize torment so I probably do use it considering each traitline is kind of defined to a legend and I do use Mallyx.

Regarding the whole lifesteal thing, The existence of the rune of tormenting states lifesteal needs work, as lifesteal is on the following: Necromancer, Thief, Revenant.Torment is on the following: Warrior, Revenant, Thief, Mesmer, Necromancer. This means that the Rune of Tormenting for Condition-centric builds is much better than lifesteal as in this list, professions like revenant get a TON of torment. On the flip side, Lifesteal is NOT good for Crit-centric builds because it CANNOT CRIT, so it is Lacklustre in both condition and crit, which having a replacement in condition. The only professions that should have Lifesteal as a central point are Necromancer and Revenants, these do as a "central" idea, however due to the lack of any real benefit to taking lifesteal over some other trait ( e.g. taking lifesteal wells over Transfusion, or taking Assassin's Annihilation over Swift Termination), If lifesteal was an entire mechanic that could be built around, like torment for revenants etc, then I feel that it'd be in a much better place.

I guess it depends on how you use it, I can't speak for lifesteal wells as i've never tried it but playing for max Minions gives a ton of lifesteal so if they did improve it, give it crits etc it would make my minion build horribly OP..Tanky MM's are probably the reason lifesteal is what it is atm, it's so easy to stack it with regen, and regular HP tics from food and runes that the sustain potential is massive even without investing in healing power.

But the problem is, this only works in open world pve.But even here, meta events do have timersHigher tier fractals? Do you wanna stay in there forever?Raids? - there are hard enrage encounters that just kill you if you don't kill them in timeSpvp?- Lackluster bad buildWvw? - same as spvp

I don't think this should be balanced around open world pve, even though, this is definitely the gamemode, that most people are playing.

It used to work fine in PvP until elite specs came along and it became far too easy to wipe out a horde of minions in a few seconds, back when I first made a minion lifesteal build I was able to easily 1v2 and 1v3 in some cases with it despite being a pvp noob.I had my fun while I could but the issue isn't so much with lifesteal in pvp it's paper mache minions.Still though i'm a big advocate for splitting PvE away from PvP so lifesteal changes in PvP are more than welcome providing they don't effect PvE.

I don't run fractals all that often tbh but when I do it's less about rewards and more about fun.In that sense I prefer the more chillout dungeon like experience of lower level fractals than the more chaotic higher levels.I get more satisfaction out of helping people in lower levels than I do with getting rewards for the high level stuff.

I don't care for raids, for the most part raids encourage the typical max DPS meta kitten that I neither find fun or interesting to play.I don't like having my playstyle or build dictated by other people so I just avoid raid content unless I can muster together a group of friends who are more interested in running them for fun.

I havent used minions or Necro much in WvW tbh but I've been ambushed a few times running my build there which hasn't gone well for my would be attacker.My build has seen very little WvW action though so i don't have enough experience to really give you a thumbs up or down on how useful it is there.When I do go into WvW I usually run a Ranger instead and follow a group around since that provides me a lot more kills and captures.

Meta Event timers are not an issue tbh.I've run many group events, bounties and other timed event content with the build both in groups and solo without much trouble.

If there's only one or two necromancer running minion master sure. No problem.But imagine all people running minion master. You wouldn't be able to clear chak gerent and also it would be laggy as hell.

In all honesty I'd love to test that but organizing a big meta like that with everyone running the same class and build would be absurdly difficult and yeah laggy as hell most likely XDOn the plus side though if I could there would be almost no deaths lol

[Ara the Elegant.6825]

I'd like to see necro's lifesteal capabilities brought inline with revenant's Battle Scars. I don't see why lifesteal abilities that deal so little damage and offer so little healing should have ICDs at all. I realize that it offers sustain and that's a big deal, but it's so heavily capped right now that it's hardly useful, in my experience.

Some ideas:

• I would merge all necro's lifesteal traits into Vampirism and change it to a player-only trait that grants stacks of lifesteal based on a certain qualifier.
• Revenants can gain 1 stack of Battle Scars for applying a stack of vuln, 5 stacks for using their heal skill, and 1 stack per second while in combat, and there's no ICD because you're just consuming stacks of a buff. So maybe necro should gain 1 stack of Vampirism per second, as well as 5 stacks for applying chill or fear.
• Or maybe gain 1 stack of Vampirism for each stack of any condition they apply to an enemy (e. g. Shroud 1 with Unyielding Blast traited would grant 2 stacks of Vampirism per strike).

Just some thoughts. But revenant with Battle Scars feels the way necro with Blood Magic should.

[Anchoku.8142]

Siphons split between power and healing helps flatten the performance curve between power-dps and healing-support builds. It is a stat investment trade that keeps siphons from being use on one build type.

Now, scaling might use some adjustments so that Berserker's gets some more dps back for taking Blood Magic and Cleric's provides better group support. (Don't remember if allies use Necro's heal stat's in Vampiric Presence but that might help make support builds more palatable.)

[Josiah.2967]

I would be happy if just the damage portion of lifesteal would crit. That patch really hurt.

[Ara the Elegant.6825]

@Anchoku.8142 said:Siphons split between power and healing helps flatten the performance curve between power-dps and healing-support builds. It is a stat investment trade that keeps siphons from being use on one build type.

Now, scaling might use some adjustments so that Berserker's gets some more dps back for taking Blood Magic and Cleric's provides better group support. (Don't remember if allies use Necro's heal stat's in Vampiric Presence but that might help make support builds more palatable.)

Some scaling adjustment is in order. Blood Magic is too much of a dps loss to justify taking on any power build, so it mostly just gets used for support. I guess that's fine for supports, but as a dps necro with full zerk-scholar, I can't take Blood no matter how badly I want to make a vamp-themed necro. Or, like Josiah said, if the damage portion could crit, that would probably handle it.

[Kulvar.1239]

@Josiah.2967 said:I would be happy if just the damage portion of lifesteal would crit. That patch really hurt.

They don't crit, but they ignore armor/toughness

[Taril.8619]

@"Anchoku.8142" said:Siphons split between power and healing helps flatten the performance curve between power-dps and healing-support builds. It is a stat investment trade that keeps siphons from being use on one build type.

Now, scaling might use some adjustments so that Berserker's gets some more dps back for taking Blood Magic and Cleric's provides better group support. (Don't remember if allies use Necro's heal stat's in Vampiric Presence but that might help make support builds more palatable.)

An interesting alternative could be Life Siphon could equalize the damage and healing, but have them both be affected by Power and Healing stats.

That would improve the stat's worth in both DPS and Support builds. As well as possibly open up some interesting hybrid builds (Such as Zealot/Crusader)

For the concerns about "Muh invincible MM build!" it would be easy enough to simply target the root of the problem, which is the pet life siphon from the Vampiric trait.

[Lahmia.2193]

@Josiah.2967 said:I would be happy if just the damage portion of lifesteal would crit. That patch really hurt.

I can't ever recall Lifesteal that could crit. When was this?

[Ara the Elegant.6825]

@Lahmia.2193 said:

@Josiah.2967 said:I would be happy if just the damage portion of lifesteal would crit. That patch really hurt.

I can't ever recall Lifesteal that could crit. When was this?

I don't personally recall lifesteal being able to crit at all, so if it ever was then it must have been a long time ago. Definitely pre-HoT. Maybe like 2013?

[KrHome.1920]

Dagger2 is the only life steal that can crit and that ever could. It has a different mechanic than the other life steal skills/traits/sigil.

Ususally a life steal is not affected by the target's armor value but can not deal critical hits. Its damage is just determined by your power value.

I am fine with the blood magic traits not being able to crit, but the other life steals on the weapons (namely focus4 and warhorn5) should definitely work like dagger2. Both skills are underwhelming at the moment.

[Ara the Elegant.6825]

Not too long ago, I built a core necro in exotic zerk and designed him around the lifesteal theme. Survivability was pretty good, but even in full zerk it took forever to kill anything. It may technically have been 'viable' in that it would eventually have gotten me through most content, but it honestly wasn't up to snuff. It's a play style that just isn't supported by the game, and I don't get why. With just a bit more damage - maybe even at a cost of less healing - necro life steal abilities could be viable. However, whether it's the trait(s) or the dagger/warhorn skills, they are very underwhelming, like you said.

GW1 also nerfed Blood Magic into the ground, to the point where necros couldn't realistically run lifesteal-based builds in most dungeons, etc. The trend seem to indicate that ANet doesn't want necros being able to rely on it.

Edit: To clarify a point.

[Taril.8619]

@"Ara the Elegant.6825" said:GW1 also nerfed Blood Magic into the ground, to the point where necros couldn't realistically run lifesteal-based builds in most dungeons, etc. The trend seem to indicate that ANet doesn't want necros being able to rely on it.

Which is odd, given how Revenant turned out. Where Battle Scars not only are a decent option, but the GM trait for them is actually optimal as it provides more DPS than Swift Termination (While also providing some life gain, which ST does not)

It's a shame that only 1 of the 3 classes that have Life Siphon mechanics can really use it in a proper build. Even worse, is just how much of Necro's kit and traits push it and it's not even very good (Necro has: Dagger 2, Focus 4, Warhorn 5, Lich 5, Signet of Vampirism active, Signet of the Locust active, Parasitic Corruption in Curses, Augury of Death and Soul Eater in Reaper, Blood Bond, Vampiric, Vampiric Aura and Vampiric Rituals from Blood Magic) at best, Soul Eater is usable, purely for the 10% damage increase though as opposed to the life gain (Even though it isn't "Siphon" and is a percentage of the damage you do, it's a mere 5% and only when not in Shroud which is where the majority of Reaper's damage lies)

Feef is stuck with their Siphons being unreliable, what with being tied to Blinding an enemy or crappy Venom skills (Which don't even have a 20% cooldown reduction on the Leeching Venom trait, unlike every other Utility skill type trait)...

Meanwhile, Revenant needs only a single trait and they poop out siphons constantly. Given that Expose Defenses in the same line grants them 5 stacks at the start of combat and whenever they use an elite skill, their Sword AA's give (Effectively) a stack each, Sword 4 can get 8 stacks per target hit, Shiro elite gives 6 stacks per target hit, Glint's Facet of Darkness can give 10 stacks per target hit and Renegade's Icerazor's Ire can provide 2 stacks per hit... Also, if you REALLY wanted to, you can also use Sigil of Frailty to get 2 stacks when attacking an enemies flank on a 2s CD...

Sigh

This also means that they can't really buff Siphon either, because then Revenant would become super broken because of how much it can Siphon based on picking literally a single (BiS) trait...

[Ara the Elegant.6825]

Yeah, it's frustrating to see the inequity of lifesteal in the game.

In an ideal world, Battle Scars would be tied into Shiro, instead of into a traitline, for the sake of thematic continuity. Maybe as a replacement for the Shiro True Nature, or something. It would make more sense, seeing as it's so specifically a Shiro ability, as opposed to a general Revenant ability. None of the other legends really had lifesteal abilities, that I can recall.

Thief is such a weird case, because I would never expect that class to have lifesteal as it doesn't fit with the theme to me. Yet there it is. And like you said, it's unreliable, so nobody's going to want to build on it too much.

Of all the classes to have it, necro is the one that makes the most sense thematically. It's right there, but you still can't really do anything with it. So close, yet so far. I think they could probably tune the necro abilities alone, without over-buffing the revenant abilities or messing with the thief ones just yet. They should be able to balance the necro traits and skills specifically, without having to change the way the game handles all lifesteal, as that could be potentially disastrous for balance, in a number of ways. If making it able to crit isn't workable, then just upping the damage packets a bit would probably do it, as a band-aid soloution.

[Taril.8619]

@"Ara the Elegant.6825" said:Thief is such a weird case, because I would never expect that class to have lifesteal as it doesn't fit with the theme to me. Yet there it is. And like you said, it's unreliable, so nobody's going to want to build on it too much.

I dunno...

A Thief having Lifesteal seems thematic enough for me. Even more so when you consider how Thief has been pushed closer to "Shadow Magic" with the rebranded Traps into Preparations as well as the new Deadeye Elite which uses shadow magic for Cantrips.

Not to mention, life stealing poison is a fairly staple RPG trope

The main issue with Leeching Venom is how trash Venoms are, with very few hits, poor status application (4 whole Vulnerability and Torment? wew) and no other effects...