Vampiric Rituals (Ideas)

[Vinny.7260]

Hi guys!

I have not been on here for a looooong while, but I've thought of some interesting ideas while casually playing other content within GW2. (Normally exclusively a PvPer- but not even doing matches, just 1v1ing and the such.)

Let's get into this.

Currently Vampiric Rituals is a Life Steal/Protection bonus to wells but I've began to notice that Necromancer is starting to generate an extensive amount of Protection via traits other than Vampiric Rituals. It's began to make me question whether the Protection part is really useful anymore since we can self-sustain pretty well (hehehe).

You could argue that the Protection is more focused towards allies since it is in Blood Magic, which is valid, but in many ways we're just over-stacking Protection for allies more than actually being the source of it.

So my purposed idea is to extend duration of wells by 2s since our wells are intended for duration-based effectiveness instead of increasing effectiveness in my mind.

Vampiric Rituals: Wells gain reduced recharge time, extended duration, and siphon health with every pulse.

Life siphon damage: 281(0.02)Life siphon healing: 212(0.02)Duration Increase: 2sRecharge Reduced: 20%

The losses of not having Protection? We no longer have an entire utility type that grants us the said-boon; but we have more damage and our utility lasts longer and get more use out of it for its primary purpose.

What do you guys think? For it? Against it? Other ideas? Let's get some conversation goin' about this idea!

[Dadnir.5038]

Objectively this is not a change that will make necromancers take this trait more. Even without protection the trait's life siphon is strong enough to earn it's GM spot, however there is little to no reason to chose this trait over any of the other 2. The main issue is that the trait do not benefit anything else than Wells and Wells aren't especially attractive skills to stack on your utility bar.

You'd need to make the Wells sexy to make this trait attractive... It's not gonna happen anytime soon.

[Vinny.7260]

@Dadnir.5038 said:Objectively this is not a change that will make necromancers take this trait more. Even without protection the trait's life siphon is strong enough to earn it's GM spot, however there is little to no reason to chose this trait over any of the other 2. The main issue is that the trait do not benefit anything else than Wells and Wells aren't especially attractive skills to stack on your utility bar.

You'd need to make the Wells sexy to make this trait attractive... It's not gonna happen anytime soon.

Oh I'm aware the issue is primarily a well-skill issue than the trait itself. I'm just looking at the trait for now before I even consider seeing what kind of amalgam of crazy I can offer for people to read and dream of existing.

Since playing 2012, seeing traits like Vital Persistence only within the last year or two finally not being a fundamental trait shows just how long it takes for Anet to make a decision like that.

[Dadnir.5038]

True...

If I had to run down my imagination, I guess I'd replace the protection by dark aura. It still baffle me that the necromancer just don't have access to auras or more kind of retaliatory effect when he basically tank hits with it's health points. For me the whole design of the necromancer often don't make sense, especially since it's supposed to descend from GW necromancer, a profession that was making the most of having a low health pool and was proficient in supporting it's allies. How it could end up becoming a large HP selfish profession is beyond me. Likewise, how it didn't make use of it's large health pool to hone it's ability to retaliate still continue to elude me.

[Vinny.7260]

I miss the days when Axe 3 was a source of Retaliation for us. I'm grateful we still have Spiteful Spirit giving us Retaliation, but even then I was nervous it was gonna go poof. I like to think that Tainted Shackles could become a Necromancer version of Glyph of Unity for Druid in the regard of retaliatory gameplay for it. Hopefully we can see some of the old play styles of it in the future! But that's a stretch out for hopin'!

[XECOR.2814]

Speaking from wvw perspective where wells are actually used. This will stiil be bad as we would have to give up one of the corruption traits from other traitlines to take blood magic which is a bad tradeoff.

This trait was supposed to be hybrid support (boon+lifesteal) approach that gw2 was going for since the beginning but it is now extremely outdated and has no place in any game mode.

I wish it did something to make staff better instead of wells as we usually take staff on roaming builds together with blood magic for unholy martyr. If vampiric ritual could give an alternative that would be great.

[KrHome.1920]

The trait is a good support trait for core and reaper.

Scourge killed it, because

• scourge benefits a lot more from transfusion and
• scourge does not need wells that grant protection as it has shades that grant might and barrier and remove conditions and
• nobody plays a support necro that is not a scourge.

[Methuselah.4376]

Maybe this should be turned into a DPS trait so that core necro has a decent power option?

[KrHome.1920]

@Methuselah.4376 said:Maybe this should be turned into a DPS trait so that core necro has a decent power option?Damage traits in sustain traitlines are problematic. I would not do that. Blood magic would turn into a second soul reaping which is already outshining spite in terms of damage and death magic in terms of sustain.

This would help reaper and scourge more than core. Core needs a shroud and weapon rework.

[Methuselah.4376]

@KrHome.1920 said:

@Methuselah.4376 said:Maybe this should be turned into a DPS trait so that core necro has a decent power option?Damage traits in sustain traitlines are problematic. I would not do that. Blood magic would turn into a second soul reaping which is already outshining spite in terms of damage and death magic in terms of sustain.

This would help reaper and scourge more than core. Core needs a shroud and weapon rework.

Well it's a single trait, unlike Spite and Soul Reaping which have more than one trait specifically for damage. This would be more similar to Water Magic with a power Tempest build, where you have a trait that does 10% more damage against vulnerable foes...though even Water magic has two damage traits now that I think on it.

[Teratus.2859]

I have to say nay on the ground that protection's usefulness varies depending on situation and stats.

Necros can be really tanky and have a lot of sustain so protection while adding to it isn't exactly neccessary for tanks.. but it is useful for glassier Necro builds which gives them more freedom to invest in higher damage builds while retaining a bit of that tanky protection potential.. this is good for Necros because of how underwhelming Necros are when it comes to damage even with full damage investment they are always scraping that barrel bottom.

So taking protection away isn't going to hurt tanks much.. but it will hurt damage focused Necros which are already being punished enough by constantly being the bottom of the DPS benchmarks.For solo play that's just not fair to them.

[KrHome.1920]

@Methuselah.4376 said:

@KrHome.1920 said:

@Methuselah.4376 said:Maybe this should be turned into a DPS trait so that core necro has a decent power option?Damage traits in sustain traitlines are problematic. I would not do that. Blood magic would turn into a second soul reaping which is already outshining spite in terms of damage and death magic in terms of sustain.

This would help reaper and scourge more than core. Core needs a shroud and weapon rework.

Well it's a single trait, unlike Spite and Soul Reaping which have more than one trait specifically for damage. This would be more similar to Water Magic with a power Tempest build, where you have a trait that does 10% more damage against vulnerable foes...though even Water magic has two damage traits now that I think on it.It would lead to the situation that every single reaper and scourge build would run blood magic and soul reaping - yes, not only the direct damage, but even the condi/hybrid builds!

A 10% damage buff (and that is the least (!) that a gm trait should grant) in blood magic additionally to the leeching damage (which the whole group is dealing) will lead to more overall damage than spite or curses can provide.

Core could additionally pick one of the other traitlines, which are not capable of lifting the spec to viable PvE levels. So we end up with less diversity on the elite specs and did not help core out of its misery.

[Methuselah.4376]

@KrHome.1920 said:

@Methuselah.4376 said:

@KrHome.1920 said:

@Methuselah.4376 said:Maybe this should be turned into a DPS trait so that core necro has a decent power option?Damage traits in sustain traitlines are problematic. I would not do that. Blood magic would turn into a second soul reaping which is already outshining spite in terms of damage and death magic in terms of sustain.

This would help reaper and scourge more than core. Core needs a shroud and weapon rework.

Well it's a single trait, unlike Spite and Soul Reaping which have more than one trait specifically for damage. This would be more similar to Water Magic with a power Tempest build, where you have a trait that does 10% more damage against vulnerable foes...though even Water magic has two damage traits now that I think on it.It would lead to the situation that every single reaper and scourge build would run blood magic and soul reaping - yes, not only the direct damage, but even the condi/hybrid builds!

A 10% damage buff (and that is the least (!) that a gm trait should grant) in blood magic additionally to the leeching damage (which the whole group is dealing) will lead to more overall damage than spite or curses can provide.

Core could additionally pick one of the other traitlines, which are not capable of lifting the spec to viable PvE levels. So we end up with less diversity on the elite specs and did not help core out of its misery.

Except, Spite gives 10% off the get go and another 20% when target is below 50% health. Add to that the might generation and the extra might value you get from Awaken the Pain.How would a flat damage increase help condi builds? Condi builds do negligible power damage, and you will not sacrifice the added condi duration and condi application you get from Curses for a power damage increase. The leech is no where near powerful enough to make a noticeable difference as far as dps goes.

[Anchoku.8142]

Wells, as they are, support zergs pretty well and are mostly used in WvW and PvE casual zerging. The protection would be missed by allies.

Vampiric Rituals was a key factor in the old GWEN comp. Stacking multiple Necro's running wells and VR is still not bad, though Scourge is stronger and they do not exclude each other. Maintaining protection on the front line 100% of the time is hard with enemy corruptions but it is worth it.