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Gear for lifestealing


Pooh.6897

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I'm a little confused when it comes to Rune of Vampirism. If we look at the name, it's quite clear that it's intended to be used for life-stealing builds. This is because everything that's labeled 'vampire' on necro basically means 'lifesteal'. However, the stats of rune of vampirism makes very little sense for a life-stealing build. For lifesteal, you want to focus on power and healing power, yet this rune focuses on power and vitality? And then the life-stealing-themed gear, which would be Cleric, doesn't focus on vitality at all and instead aims for toughness? I've been trying to make a life-stealing build for my necro and so far it has been pure chaos, mostly due to the stat combinations that are available to us. Other than the runes that focus on all stats, there isn't a single rune in the game that focuses on power and healing power at all. I'm currently running full apothecary and paired that with a condi-build, but obviously this is subpar since now i'm not actually running a lifesteal-build, i'm running a condi-build that has self-healing capabilities slapped on top of it. It'd be awesome if we can get more attention for lifestealing in this game.

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23 minutes ago, Arianth Moonlight.6453 said:

life stealing is bad and the old devs hated it. Not sure what's the instance of the new devs but judging by some recent changes, I bet they don't like it either.

so don't expect anything related to life steal to be added and if they do, it will be as bad as what we have now.

Not sure if they hate it but it does remind me of the status of blood magic in GW1.

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1 hour ago, Arianth Moonlight.6453 said:

life stealing is bad and the old devs hated it. Not sure what's the instance of the new devs but judging by some recent changes, I bet they don't like it either.

so don't expect anything related to life steal to be added and if they do, it will be as bad as what we have now.

It's pretty strong on Blind spam Thief but also ultra niche. Kinda wish there was more focus/improvements on it and some improvements for Dark Aura to support it in the process. The Thief Shadow Arts-Blind-Lifesteal build is also very unfriendly around allies who easily mess up your combo fields; making it 100% a solo only playstyle which is unfortunate.

Then there're anomalys like Specter having tons of Dark Fields but Scepter having no Combo Finishers and the weapons that make the best use of Lifesteal/Dark Aura finishers are Strike damage weapon skills that neither Specter nor the Dark Aura mechanics support.

Edited by Doggie.3184
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4 hours ago, Doggie.3184 said:

It's pretty strong on Blind spam Thief but also ultra niche. Kinda wish there was more focus/improvements on it and some improvements for Dark Aura to support it in the process. The Thief Shadow Arts-Blind-Lifesteal build is also very unfriendly around allies who easily mess up your combo fields; making it 100% a solo only playstyle which is unfortunate.

Then there're anomalys like Specter having tons of Dark Fields but Scepter having no Combo Finishers and the weapons that make the best use of Lifesteal/Dark Aura finishers are Strike damage weapon skills that neither Specter nor the Dark Aura mechanics support.

On necro, you do have the wells that count as dark fields and the old trait 'Vampiric Rituals' did give wells lifestealing properties. Necro doesn't have a lot of access to finishers however which is unfortunate. One could argue that staff could be used since the AA has a chance to be a projectile finisher but it's not a great option. then there's MH dagger that has a very obvious link with lifestealing through Life Siphon, although the AA or Dark Pact doesnt really support the lifestealing aspect a whole lot. Warhorn also has lifesteal on it, as does focus skill 4.

The problem with GW2 Blood magic is in large part that it does want lifestealing to be a thing, but then it doesn't really do anything extra or special to really make it shine. It's also not clear to me what stats to focus on. Lifestealing itself doesnt take advantage from precision or ferocity, but it scales marginally with power. If i were to make this a strike damage-build, i'd have to focus on berserker stats + healing power, which could potentially work. However if I want to then go into wvw i'd have to focus on some kind of defensive stat since i can't lifesteal enough to live through damage spikes, which would mean i now have to focus on 5 stats, which honestly becomes a bit of a tall order, especially since access to healing power is pretty restricted. I could focus on Zealot + Cleric but then my precision would tank. I could focus on full Zealot but then I have the problem that 1) I dont have any ferocity and 2) I dont have a defensive stat to survive outside of PvE.

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1.)
You can get lifesteal working properly, but not how you intend to do it. I've been at this point several times over the past ~ 8 years.

The main problem is the scaling with healing-power. I will show it to you with one simple example:

Signet of Vampirism
base heal (passive): 195
Healing Power scaling: 0.024

The baseline heal from this 195 HP per second. Maximum healing power is ~ 2.200. That makes a total of 52.8 HP increase.
THAT IS LOW! In order to reach 2.200 Healing Power, you hit as hard as a toddler with a bubble-kit. And your HP recovery is still trash.

Conclusion: Do not go for Healing Power.

If you want to utilize lifestealing/lifesiphoning, you try to get as many triggers and sources as possible. Necromancer can do it, as well as Thief via blind-spam as mentioned above.
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Your second problem is the rune. Superior Rune of Vampirism is a farm-rune for activities where you fight tons of trash-mobs. It is insanely powerful on tag-builds. When encountering bosses with larger HP pools, the the life-steal effect does not help you to stay alive.

As you are using multiple sources of life-steal, you need a rune that amplifies those effects. The Superior Rune of Sanctuary. In combination with Bloodbank, you build up barrier in addition to your incoming healing. Both effects combined make the life-stealing worthwhile.


2.)
Even with this synergy of the Superior Rune of Sanctuary, Bloodbank and Lifesteal combined, the healing effect is still mediocre at best. It depends a bit on your playstyle of course. In my case, I needed more, as I wanted to mimic my Scrapper. Challenging a Scrapper in recovery-rate is tough. But not impossible.

The (new) Harbinger specialization uses the Blight mechanic, which generates passive HP recovery. If you manage to maintain a 'healthy' stack of Blight, you can boost the HP recovery much further. Which also results in more barrier-generation.

My build utilizes all of these effects combined. It drains a lot of HP from enemies, grants massive passive regeneration of HP and in addition a very nice barrier pool. DPS? 8.2k on self-buffs (16 might + permanent group quickness) and 9.2k on full buffs. Both with ~ 6k regrowing barrier. With Dark Pact + Life Siphon, you can build another 8k barrier for emergencies. Given that you can mash auto-attack (dual dagger) and just have to enter shroud every 10 seconds, that is imo OK. Sustain is very high, while DPS is still acceptable. 

If you want to take a look at it: 
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSEBgid3lRw4YesU2Im8WlxSA-zRRYVK9MsYEMlRgVQEpgzziwjbQFA-e

Note: You can squeeze out another +7-8k barrier on emergencies via Dark Pact + Life Siphon.

Edited by HnRkLnXqZ.1870
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For life stealing Toughness would be much better than Healing Power, because life stealing traits and skills have super low healing power coefficient (it's often less than 0,1).

Why Toughness? Because you will take less damage, and maybe you will be able to out-heal more incoming damage.

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2 hours ago, Antycypator.9874 said:

For life stealing Toughness would be much better than Healing Power, because life stealing traits and skills have super low healing power coefficient (it's often less than 0,1).

Why Toughness? Because you will take less damage, and maybe you will be able to out-heal more incoming damage.

Yup. More toughness>less damage taken>effective hp goes up>hp healed is worth more. Common thing with lifesteal in games.

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HnRkLnXqZ.1870 is correct, it's better to stack sources of lifesteal rather than healing power almost universally, don't forget ascended food and sigils too, sigil of draining can give you a lot of extra healing if you can proc it. Mesmer and thief usually make better use of this but you should be able to get some good returns on it using fear, corrupts and warhorn, especially on a durable celestial type build if you're doing WvW.

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On 3/8/2023 at 5:58 PM, HnRkLnXqZ.1870 said:

1.)
You can get lifesteal working properly, but not how you intend to do it. I've been at this point several times over the past ~ 8 years.

Thanks for your advice. I've been playing around for a while now and I eventually landed on Apothecary + tormenting runes. This is the build I use in WvW with quite a lot of success so far: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSAFosFaYZoMVmHLh1ipvVd0H-z1IYxonvM6qACPB8eAA-w. I did try out sanctuary runes, but I found it quite difficult to keep up regeneration as well. Also the condi damage dropped quite hard. I've been trying to make a strike-damage version for a while, but i haven't been very succesful so far. I'm thinking of a combination of crusader's and Zealot but it's not great. The condi-version is quite successful however. Next I intend to try out Death Magic instead of Soul Reaping in WvW and see how that one goes: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSAFosFaYZoMVmHLh1in10X0H-z1IYxonvM6qACPB8eAA-w. I discovered that the listed condi duration for dhuumfire on gw2skills.net differs from in-game. Did some damage testing and found out that soul reaping improves the dps with roughly 16.67% over the version with Death Magic, which is less than I initially predicted. Still not quite sure about the sigils and what food to choose, but otherwise the build is coming along quite nicely.

Edited by Darth Pooh.5638
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On 3/8/2023 at 2:41 AM, Arianth Moonlight.6453 said:

life stealing is bad and the old devs hated it. Not sure what's the instance of the new devs but judging by some recent changes, I bet they don't like it either.

so don't expect anything related to life steal to be added and if they do, it will be as bad as what we have now.

Untamed.

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2 hours ago, Darth Pooh.5638 said:

Thanks for your advice. I've been playing around for a while now and I eventually landed on Apothecary + tormenting runes. This is the build I use in WvW with quite a lot of success so far: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSAFosFaYZoMVmHLh1ipvVd0H-z1IYxonvM6qACPB8eAA-w. I did try out sanctuary runes, but I found it quite difficult to keep up regeneration as well. Also the condi damage dropped quite hard. I've been trying to make a strike-damage version for a while, but i haven't been very succesful so far. I'm thinking of a combination of crusader's and Zealot but it's not great. The condi-version is quite successful however. Next I intend to try out Death Magic instead of Soul Reaping in WvW and see how that one goes: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSAFosFaYZoMVmHLh1in10X0H-z1IYxonvM6qACPB8eAA-w. I discovered that the listed condi duration for dhuumfire on gw2skills.net differs from in-game. Did some damage testing and found out that soul reaping improves the dps with roughly 16.67% over the version with Death Magic, which is less than I initially predicted. Still not quite sure about the sigils and what food to choose, but otherwise the build is coming along quite nicely.

Try all celestial, you'll benefit from all of the stats. You'll have more shroud, a lot more power damage and ironically more condition damage as conditions last longer. You might say that you lose out as people cleanse but don't forget you make up for that with much better up front power damage too. You also get more boon duration and crits.
Healing takes a little hit especially warhorn life syphoning but it's still very respectible and the boon duration will help give you more regen. Harbinger is basically built for celestial in WvW at the moment, there's just nothing that compares due to how much you gain from all of the stats.

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56 minutes ago, apharma.3741 said:

Try all celestial, you'll benefit from all of the stats. You'll have more shroud, a lot more power damage and ironically more condition damage as conditions last longer. You might say that you lose out as people cleanse but don't forget you make up for that with much better up front power damage too. You also get more boon duration and crits.
Healing takes a little hit especially warhorn life syphoning but it's still very respectible and the boon duration will help give you more regen. Harbinger is basically built for celestial in WvW at the moment, there's just nothing that compares due to how much you gain from all of the stats.

How about something like this for WvW: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSAFosFaYZoMV2KLh1ipvVd0H-z1IYxonvM6qC6IF8eakxzGA-w. It reaches 99.67% torment duration which looks quite promising imo. Healing power increases both the perma regen as well as blight and the lifestealing. Toughness makes the healing worth more, condition damage for the torment applied. The build could benefit from having some sort of passive might generation but i havent quite figured that one out. Between tormenting runes, Elixir of promise and the regen from mark of evasion we can quite easily have regen permanently up so boon duration just for regen isn't really needed, but it could be quite good for other boons. Might be worth it to swap out soul reaping for Death magic but i'm not sure. I'll try running full celestial later and see how that compares. Normally I'm a big fan of taking vitality for necro since it gives you both more health and a larger LF-pool, but I have mixed feelings when it comes to harbinger. When at a high amount of blight, which is what you want since that gives the strongest healing, a percentual amount of health gets removed. This means that if you take lots of vitality for harbinger, you end up 'trading' more health for 25 stacks of blight than if you were to not take vitality, effectively negating the effects of vitality.

Edited by Darth Pooh.5638
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7 minutes ago, Darth Pooh.5638 said:

How about something like this for WvW: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?PSAFosFaYZoMV2KLh1ipvVd0H-z1IYxonvM6qC6IF8eakxzGA-w. It reaches 99.67% torment duration which looks quite promising imo. Healing power increases both the perma regen as well as blight and the lifestealing. Toughness makes the healing worth more, condition damage for the torment applied. The build could benefit from having some sort of passive might generation but i havent quite figured that one out. Between tormenting runes, Elixir of promise and the regen from mark of evasion we can quite easily have regen permanently up so boon duration just for regen isn't really needed, but it could be quite good for other boons. Might be worth it to swap out soul reaping for Death magic but i'm not sure. I'll try running full celestial later and see how that compares.

Full celestial will benefit you for the following stats:
Power, Precision, Ferocity, Toughness, Vitality, Healing Power, Expertise.
You simply cannot get close to this level of benefits from mix and matching and as you're running weapons with good power scaling you really want the hybrid stats.
I wouldn't go all in on torment like that as it's not a strong condition anymore due to dealing double damage if the person is standing still, try balthazar runes so your burning does more in shroud. You still get 50% duration to torment but you also buff the burn damage by 50% and burns do 3 times more damage than torment.

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