Blood Bank: Anet, this is Design Failure

[KrHome.1920]

@Rykros.9130 said:locust will take you from half hp in the middle of a fight to full hp and 9k barrier as well as ripping 10 boons. You all just don't know how to utilize it well.Yeah sure... since when does necro have a health pool of 11k?

(1500 + 2x 645) x5 = 13950 healing

In celestial gear it's 16505 healing (and your health pool is 26k). And no cele scourge, that runs BM at all, drops transfusion!

Add a bit more healing, since BM increases healing power. But your calculation is still absurd. In general the two other gm traits are superior. Your example is even proof for that, as it is ridiculously situational.

[Xenic.1387]

Want this trait to be useful? Make the following changes, tweak the numbers as necessary but you get the idea.
all incoming healing will provide barrier at a 10% ratio. If you receive a burst heal for 5000, then you get 500 barrier.all incoming healing will provide barrier at 5% ratio for members of your group (cap at 5).all self healing skills will provide barrier at 15% ratio for self and 7.5% for group (cap at 5).all life tap skills will provide barrier at 50% ratio for self and members of group (cap at 5).condition and power will suffer a penalty of -200 when this trait is selected.

I'm coming from a wvw perspective so the numbers may be significantly different for pve / spvp. The goal is to make the GM trait in the support tree actually be a good support mechanic while lowering the damage output some to prevent it from being abused.

[Obtena.7952]

@Rykros.9130 said:kitten you all even talking about locust signet + BB and sand flare being enhanced by it are literally quite amazing. It makes blood magic do just as good as death magic in wvw zerg fights for instance. With a good setup - locust will take you from half hp in the middle of a fight to full hp and 9k barrier as well as ripping 10 boons. You all just don't know how to utilize it well.

Actually, if you paid attention to the thread ... I already identified this use scenario.

Maybe you think it's reasonable to have a GM trait poorly designed to save your ass specifically for WvW Zergs IF you load another 3 skills/traits to make it work ... I think that's crap.

[JusticeRetroHunter.7684]

I think the trait is good, but my only gripe with it, is it's selfish nature.

I would only propose that it should somehow effect other allies in addition to yourself, or changing the requirement of max health so that it doesn't require an additional people to make real usage of the trait.

If they consider another rework, i suggest changing the idea of granting barrier from extra healing, into converting life force into barrier for allies, or converting life force into healing for allies. It should lose it's competitive placement with Transfusion. so that we can have the possibility of a viable reaper core or scourge healer build.

[Rykros.9130]

The healing math of the previous comment is way off. My locust heals literally 3754 per target when boon ripping.

It's a mass corruption build for condi'ing the enemy while stripping all the resistance,protection,stab,etc. It's actually extremely powerful. The only thing its not good at is mass condi'ing and ripping basic pve mobs.(because its not needed and they dont have boons)

Just because you think that certain skills are less desired by you in your setup does not in any way mean there arent better setups then yours. Especially when it causes a lot of chaos in focused boon bursting crowds and makes you impervious to condi bombing counters because you ripped 5 stacks of res while bombing.

[Obtena.7952]

@Rykros.9130 said:

1. The healing math of the previous comment is way off. My locust heals literally 3754 per target when boon ripping.
2. It's a mass corruption build for condi'ing the enemy while stripping all the resistance,protection,stab,etc. It's actually extremely powerful. The only thing its not good at is mass condi'ing and ripping basic pve mobs.(because its not needed and they dont have boons)
3. Just because you think that certain skills are less desired by you in your setup does not in any way mean there arent better setups then yours. Especially when it causes a lot of chaos in focused boon bursting crowds and makes you impervious to condi bombing counters because you ripped 5 stacks of res while bombing.

Right ... so we (as necro players) are going to have ONE GM trait slot taken up that allows for a single, broken use scenario that gives significant healing IF you take numerous other skills IF you boon strip in a WvW zerg. Yeah, sounds like a bang up amazing trait design. :astonished:

Look, just because there is one amazing thing this can do ... does NOT make it a good trait design.

[Rykros.9130]

Uhm the significant healing only really needs sand flare and locust signet to sustain you insanely.It's not 'socket your whole bar with skills'.You really seem to be arguing for arguments sake alone because as far as I can tell blood magic is now comparable to death magic in performance for defense while giving you the option to go more heal for allies with some of the other passives.

I do not see how its a 'design failure' when its extremely useful depending on how you build your characters. Is that not how traits work? So lets take it from a different angle here - Convince me how its a useless 'design failure'. Go ahead.

[Obtena.7952]

@Rykros.9130 said:Uhm the significant healing only really needs sand flare and locust signet to sustain you insanely.

Really? So this GM trait ONLY needs TWO other things to be highly situational, in providing broken heals in a specific game mode for it's only decent use scenario? Oh ... Well in that case ... I stand corrected ... best trait ever! :astonished: Maybe we should be lucky it's not three or four things ... hopefully we get more IWIN GM traits that fill up my skill slots for me ... (thick sarcasm here).

So lets say you DON'T take those two things ... then what? OH right ... refer to #1 and #2 of my original post. Maybe you believe Anet designing traits that pre-determine your choice of other skills to be AT ALL useful is good design. I don't. I'm not even sure Anet looking objectively at this trait would even think it's within their own good trait design parameters.

[Rykros.9130]

Theres also the immense continuous pre-barrier of vampirism signet.The locust works in pve too. Especially fractals. So its not just one game mode.Theres weapon skills like dagger mainhand and warhorn that benefit from the immense heal pulsing they give allowing free barriers.It also augments both sources of blood well greatly allowing for some immense barrier stacking when the healing hits cap.Life from death causing an already immense barrier of like 12k from harbringer to add additional layers of barrier.It can also give barrier stacking on shroud for reapers.(not that its needed)It also puts to use every single bit of healing especially when you overheal which is nice since the best overall sustain a scourge for instance has ever had was literally from caking on barrier before you get hammered to soften the incoming attacks.

Also to put it simply...every single trait in the game is like that. For instance I wouldn't use power skills with a condi build with all condi traits. Your traits will always limit your options in skill application unless you just want to be using useless skills with the wrong combos. The entire point is every single trait has a range of niches it belongs in and a range of skills you end up utilizing to make it matter. The more you build torwards something the better it gets. Therefore most of your points arent really valid.

[Brujeria.7536]

@"Rykros.9130" said:Uhm the significant healing only really needs sand flare and locust signet to sustain you insanely.It's not 'socket your whole bar with skills'.You really seem to be arguing for arguments sake alone because as far as I can tell blood magic is now comparable to death magic in performance for defense while giving you the option to go more heal for allies with some of the other passives.

I do not see how its a 'design failure' when its extremely useful depending on how you build your characters. Is that not how traits work? So lets take it from a different angle here - Convince me how its a useless 'design failure'. Go ahead.

it does not sustain you "insanely" or anything like that. Its 1 scenario that it might - MIGHT - be good that scenario is only with signet of the locust - MAYBE if you hit 5 targets, IF you are not blinded , i(else you get 0 nada nothing). and even then, you only get the overflow healing as barrier. But then again, you must be in a spot to hit 5 people - which ultimately means 5 people can potentially train you, even under this one useable scenario, the barrier wont safe you.

Also they wanted to create a "gm that can be used by a wider array of builds". The trait is only - maybe - good with a single signet, limiting the ultimate use of this trait - maybe - from an entire line of skills (wells) to a simple utility skill.

[Obtena.7952]

@Rykros.9130 said:Also to put it simply...every single trait in the game is like that.

No, not every trait suffers from the deficiencies I outlined in my original post, all at once and even if there were some that did, I'm not talking about those ones. I'm talking about this one. Somehow you have associated 'extremely useful' with 'not design deficient' ... that in itself makes no sense. I could design a trait that makes you immune to everything on every auto attack as well ... that's also 'extremely useful' ... but it's about as bad a design as you would ever see.

So no, just because you have identified some situations and combination of skills that would make this trait work well does NOT mean it's not designed poorly.

[Kodama.6453]

One thought that crossed my mind: maybe Anet is preparing some combos for the next expansion and their elite specs here already.

I thought that it was interesting that anet was working a bit on engineer's supportive features like reworking soothing detonations, since I expect the next elite spec for the engineer to be a support spec.

Maybe something similar is happening here. I expect the next e-spec for the necromancer to be a bruiser (like scrapper or daredevil are for their classes). Necro already has a dps spec (reaper) and a support spec (scourge), the bruiser spec other classes got in the past is missing.If said elite spec would have heavy emphasis on lifestealing, for example, then this all would make sense, because blood bank would support such a playstyle pretty well and give such an e-spec additional survivability.

[Rykros.9130]

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Rykros.9130 said:Also to put it simply...every single trait in the game is like that.

No, not every trait suffers from the deficiencies I outlined in my original post, all at once and even if there were some that did, I'm not talking about those ones. I'm talking about this one. Somehow you have associated 'extremely useful' with 'not design deficient' ... that in itself makes no sense. I could design a trait that makes you immune to everything on every auto attack as well ... that's also 'extremely useful' ... but it's about as bad a design as you would ever see.

So no, just because you have identified some situations and combination of skills that would make this trait work well does NOT mean it's not designed poorly.

From what I can tell your entire logic with this is 'this is automatically badly designed and all because in my opinion the traits and stuff that get tied into it shouldn't be needed to make it useful'.

From what I can tell tons of traits from most of the classes I've used especially over time have always followed a tied in to make them useful approach. Your opinion on whether something works or not ingame is literally just opinion at this point given that I have used this trait a lot as of late and its been highly useful for my scourge builds. It actually helps a lot more then people would seem to realize.

Being able to cake on extra layers of absorption without worrying about when exactly you proc heals actually helps a ton and I've been loving using blood bank.

As for Brujeria - You can say something like that all you want but in my experience it has actually been a massive help even in group vs group. It has compared to death magic quite a lot and I tend to find myself picking it rather then dm. When your ripping enemy stab and mass corrupting you basically always succeed in popping it in group vs group fighting and suddenly going up 20k hp into a 9.5k barrier when the enemies had you down to half health - actually turns the tide of a lot of fights. Also, the extra emerging barrier when you proc any other healing skill when engaging enemies actually helps a ton.(usually best with signet of vampirism if not corrupt building)

[Obtena.7952]

@Rykros.9130 said:

@Obtena.7952 said:

@Rykros.9130 said:Also to put it simply...every single trait in the game is like that.

No, not every trait suffers from the deficiencies I outlined in my original post, all at once and even if there were some that did, I'm not talking about those ones. I'm talking about this one. Somehow you have associated 'extremely useful' with 'not design deficient' ... that in itself makes no sense. I could design a trait that makes you immune to everything on every auto attack as well ... that's also 'extremely useful' ... but it's about as bad a design as you would ever see.

So no, just because you have identified some situations and combination of skills that would make this trait work well does NOT mean it's not designed poorly.

From what I can tell your entire logic with this is 'this is automatically badly designed and all because in my opinion the traits and stuff that get tied into it shouldn't be needed to make it useful'.

Then that's a lack of understanding on your part because In made three points about why I think the design is bad and you can't seem to get through more than one of them. It's not as simple as one thing being wrong here ... the trait is bad as a combination of ALL three things I mentioned.

Being able to cake on extra layers of absorption without worrying about when exactly you proc heals actually helps a ton and I've been loving using blood bank.

Great, you love it and it's 'tons' helpful ... whatever that means ... that doesn't change the points I have made about why it's badly designed. What your statement DOES show is that you are biased by your love the trait to avoid objective analysis of what this trait is ... and likely you will say whatever to dispute claims it's hot garbage. Again, what you love or find useful or not has NOTHING to do with it's bad design.

The fact it works like you say it does is actually evidence it's bad design .... when it works in good combination of other skills, it's broken AF ... and all other times it's garbage mode.

[Rykros.9130]

This is a pointless conversation. Do you design and balance games? Probably not. In your opinion is it bad design? Yes.Do people differ from you on that? Yes.Do you bother to come up with something more convincing then 'its bad design because I don't like how its designed'? No.Just because it ties in with skills and traits to get most of its solo usefulness doesn't automatically make it a bad design - especially when people still find really good ways of using it.A lot of the havoc people I sometimes duel or run around with seem to think its actually OP in some ways and it usually is. Just because you dont like how it functions doesn't mean your opinion suddenly becomes a fact.

[Obtena.7952]

@Rykros.9130 said:A lot of the havoc people I sometimes duel or run around with seem to think its actually OP in some ways and it usually is.

Like I already said ... that's evidence there is a problem here. Maybe you think that when they work, OP'ed traits are good design ... I do not. How much you love it has nothing to do with what makes it a bad design.

[Taril.8619]

Blood Bank is just a worse Vital Persistence.

Vital Persistence gives 1800 life straight up, no need to overheal to get it. Then gives 20% increased healing effectiveness providing synergy with any and all healing, this is both with smol tick heals such as Life Siphon or Regen as well as big heals like a 5 person + boon rips Locust signet and is guaranteed to be useful during times where you actually give a damn about healing.

VP is a Master trait, not Grand Master. It is also considered to be trash by basically everyone. So what does this mean for Blood Bank? Yeah... It's worse than trash...

Honestly, if Blood Bank's effect was tacked onto Vital Persistence, without even moving it from Master tier, the trait would still be considered trash...

[Anchoku.8142]

Have to admit I am skeptical of the "push into an enemy blob" strategy when marks, wells, and shades offer less risk.

[Krelian.6327]

I never post here, just wanted to say this trait is a complete joke.

[Tman.6349]

@"Anchoku.8142" said:Have to admit I am skeptical of the "push into an enemy blob" strategy when marks, wells, and shades offer less risk.

So much this!!!

Not only am I 100% sure that the usefulness/efficiency of this build is being grossly exaggerated, I'm not interested in a TRAIT that forces me (or expects me) to play exactly the opposite of how Necro should ever be played.You forgo everything you've ever known about Necro positioning. You completely thrown the ranged advantage of your shades, staff, wells, corrupts, and scepter/axe right out the window. Not only are you out of place yourself but now you're not in position to help any allies. This disregards the fact you've ditched a great supportive trait for a selfish one already.So now you charge into a bunch of enemies (where you shouldn't be) and...pop all of your defensive cooldowns after taking 50% HP worth of damage. All of this for what exactly? A bit of damage and removing 3 boons from 5 enemies and maybe drop Ghastly Breach. You're not even in a good position to share your barrier from Sand Flare anymore. You've lost your movement speed from your signet and are in bad position with a bit of barrier for 5 more seconds surrounded by enemies that you certainly haven't killed yet.I don't get the point of any of this. This just seems to support the fact everyone else has pointed out that this is only useful when you don't need it and ineffectual when you do. And this is with a highly specialized build that seems to serve absolutely no purpose at the expense of EVERYTHING that you already do well. I can only guess that we're all wrong and Anet would NEVER actually nerf Necro, for no reason, and make up for it with something that only leaves it a useless shell of it's former self for 'flavor's sake'...

I'd be interested in the exact build you're using to make this work Rykros. Some footage would surely be amazing.

[SlitheSlivier.1908]

I agree, blood back kind of sucks. The only time it's alright is if you have lots of supportive teammates healing you, this will help keep your life up a bit in theory... but still in actuality is that you are rarely if ever at 100% health and it's useless.

[Asum.4960]

Couple of redesign ideas for that Blood Magic GM slot after few minutes brainstorming:

Blood Bank:100% Health gained over your maximum Health is converted to Barrier and your Barrier doesn't expire naturally anymore.Barrier you apply grants 3 seconds of Protection, 20 sec ICD.Regeneration effects do not trigger this trait.

Why? It makes the Trait a lot more useful in a variety of situations, especially in PvP and WvW as well as in general solo play by allowing you to actually Bank barrier before engagements, getting use out of the trait without having to blow your heal cooldowns before needing them, hoping to get value out of the barrier. Added Group support element, especially for Scourge, and compensation for Prot loss from Wells. It keeps the Blood Bank design intact, but drastically widens it's niche and makes it more worthy of being a GM.

Empowered Blood:Your Life Siphoning damage and healing effects are increased by 100% and grant you Barrier while above 75% Health.While under the effects of Barrier, deal 10% increased damage and condition damage.

Why? I always found it a shame that the Life Drain/Vampiric aspect of Blood Magic from GW1 wasn't really supported in GW2, even more so after seeing Revenant (which seems to get all the Necromancer concepts but better) getting the Battle Scars mechanic. This would allow Blood Magic to feel much more relevant for PvE solo play and WvW roaming, add a more offensive and selfish competing pick to Unholy Martyr in PvP, as well as potentially allowing Blood Magic to compete with Soul Reaping for condi Scourge in endgame PvE.

Vampiric Master:Life Siphoning damage and healing effects you apply are increased by 100% and Vampiric Presence now affects 10 Targets.Last Rites now grants you and up to 10 Allies Barrier equal to x% of your Siphon Healing depending on it's threshholds, 30%/40%/50%.

Why? Similarly to Empowered Blood this plays more into the Siphoning Theme of blood, focused more around team support. This could both be viable as sustain and group support tool in PvP and WvW, as well as allowing for an alternative pick to Tranfusion for Healscourge in PvE, allowing for more offensive support when the revive functionality isn't needed - as well as having a at least niche place for solo play. *The design is a big awkward since Vampiric Presence isn't a minor/baseline and would work better in conjunction with replacing the Vampiric Minor with VP, buffing it's baseline to compensate, and adding a new Major Trait in it's place as well.

[Anchoku.8142]

Personally, I would have Blood Bank modify Vampyric Aura to allow 50% of over-healing to become barrier.

[Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582]

I dunno guys, this trait is incredibly powerful right now, I just can't find an actual use for it lol.

When do you actually want a ton of Barrier for yourself? Except maybe soloing. A Necro tank? Totally doable. Apothecary gear and it would be unkillable. But where would you use it?

I tested this out in the Special Forces area and running a Scourge condi DPS build, but with Parasitic Contagion and Sanctuary Runes, I was able to maintain the 50% health cap of Barrier while doing 18k DPS and not even really trying.

Personally, I feel like they should have made this a DPS trait. The line already has support and Transfusion is god mode tier, its gotta be pretty good to compete with that.

Considering Necro is about 10k dps behind the other top tier DPS classes, it could be something as wild as "You no longer gain Barrier. Convert incoming Barrier into condition damage. 2% health=1% more condition damage. So, if the 50% cap were reached, you'd be doing 25% more condition damage for 5s. Obviously you'd need to adjust that for PvP/WvW as it would be a ridiculous burst and healing with a big group of Scourges, this trait and Parasitic Contagion.

@"Hannelore.8153" said:The only viable use it has is to cleanse conditions on Scourge builds with the barrier trait. But if they're damaging conditions, that requires the player's health be reasonably high enough to gain a barrier from their heals first.

In other words, this trait is only super useful in the first five seconds of combat.

It specifically states on Abrasive Grit's tooltip that this won't work. "This effect only occurs with barrier from scourge skills and traits."

[Anchoku.8142]

@Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582 said:I dunno guys, this trait is incredibly powerful right now, I just can't find an actual use for it lol.

Just two quibbles;Scourge does not have a competitive condi-dps build, especially with Blood Magic. Also, calling a trait incredibly powerful while useless is a contradiction. I would shorten that description to incredibly unnecessary.