ArenaNet talk:Skill feedback/Necromancer/Blood Spike

Vort3x's issue
I think it would be simpler to just make life stealing count as damage. -- Gordon Ecker 03:00, 10 March 2008 (UTC)


 * Take a look at this idea: http://www.guildwarsguru.com/forum/showthread.php?t=10264634


 * Basically, make life-steals only 'steal' upto your maximum health, beyond that they would either do nothing, or simply deal shadow damage, which can be Prot'd. This would open the door for buffing life-steals without worrying about Blood spike bypassing prots.  Think 80+ Vamp Gaze and 120+ Ravenous Gaze (without any conditional reqs).  I REALLY like this idea.  Carinae Dragonblood 09:13, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I like it. I didn't make sense since you "steal" for no benefit. --Life Infusion &laquo;T&raquo; 01:01, 11 March 2008 (UTC)
 * I love this idea, would be a way to buff blood magic and actually make it usefull outside of batteries and bloodspike Gosu Death 23:54, 31 March 2008 (UTC)
 * Bloodspike is terrible. Get your monk to walk to the priest of balthazar and unlock Infuse Health.  That's the easiest way to stop it.  If you don't bring monks for whatever reason, brings mesmer interrupts, or ranger interrupts, or warrior interrupts.  If for some reason you don't run people on your team, you were probably looking for the Command and Conquer forum.
 * Also keep in mind this is coming from someone who got his rank by blood spiking. I still think it's terrible. ~Shard (talk) 03:27, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

Blood spikes are a joke and if you lose against them it's your own fault. Life stealing is way too low in this game to even be a threat and most of the skills having a two second casting time you can easily take out a necromancer in three hits by playing as a dervish. Just spam fire magic aoe skills because life stealing is so low it can not  keep up with the high amounts of damage.William Wallace 03:13, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Leaning on what shard said. -- NUKLEAR  [[Image:User NuclearVII signature 3.jpg|19x19px]] IIV  22:25, 26 April 2008 (UTC)
 * Agreeing with our Prophet Shard. I like Blood Magic, but I know that a Blood Necromancer actually outlives not defeats. It's far from overpowered. If you'd ask PvEers, you'd probably get an "Underpowered". And life stealing's advantage over protection prayers is there for a reason. Otherwise THAT'd be OP. It's a balancing act or do you want to cry that you are not invincible? You could also say "Nerf Smiter's Boon (PvP)" and I'd think you are serious. Almost feeling sorry for any personal attacks, thine Noctarch 10:56, 2 September 2008 (UTC)
 * You still serious about nerfing Smiter's Boon? --The preceding unsigned comment was added by User:72.71.230.18 (talk).

76.25.197.215's Issue
Or just make it count as damage so it's prottable. -- Gordon Ecker 23:53, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure the way the Guild Wars damage system is structured prevents that. No proof, just a solid hunch. --76.25.197.215 23:55, 3 October 2008 (UTC)
 * If they can't recode how health stealing works, they could recode the health stealing skills to deal damage and cause the caster to gain health equal to the damage dealt. -- Gordon Ecker 00:21, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * The thing is, unprottable damage actually balances the game. Do you know why there are no 55 monks in PvP? Two reasons, lifesteal and enchant removal. If you get rid of lifesteal, then it becomes pretty shitty, because then there would be gay TA/AB/HB teams which just ran all 55 Monks, and no amount of enchant removal could beat that (see how good rend enchantments is when there are 4 monks with it, e.g. instantly back up before you can cast another skill). This would pretty much break an already broken game.Crimmastermind 01:58, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Oh, and by the way, lifesteal isn't that imba. It is quite comparable to Smiters Boon before it got nerfed, except the damage is shitter and its unprottable, and the heals are worse. It is only good because it is unprottable, and it lacks the damage output of nearly anything else (hell, the damage is basically less than a flare spammer or a Ranger without conditions). Making it prottable is just like making escape have a recharge of 60, it solves a problem, but kills the whole idea. Crimmastermind 02:00, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * You're so fucking bad. --216.241.108.106 11:56, 4 October 2008 (UTC)
 * NPA etc
 * But basically, Crimma... the reason 55s don't exist in PvP is because they don't do anything but lose. They don't support a team. They don't do any damage to speak of. All they do is stay alive and knock retarded players down.
 * RA/TA matches are now timed, thanks in part to stupid shit like 55 monks, who thought that being absolutely useless was an awesome tactic. It's still annoying to wait 7-8 minutes for one of these tards to lose, but it's better than being forced to leave because you don't want to wait an hour or longer for him to leave.
 * GvG and Heroes' Ascent both have objectives. You can't just stand there and be useless or your team loses. Whether it's relic running, capture points, king of the hill, splitting into the enemy's base to kill NPCs, or defending your own base, 55 monks do absolutely nothing. Thus, nobody brings them. Note that people also never bring shitty life steal skills either, unless they're breaking the game via shoddy mechanics (either via this bloodspike or by that fagway GvG build that insta-kills the Lord).
 * "It is quite comparable to Smiters Boon before it got nerfed" - I quite agree. I think that these bloodspike skills deserve 25 energy and 90 recharge to balance them, just like Smiter's Boon got.
 * I'm in favor of the suggestion. Bloodspike used to deal so much damage that it could kill a target instantly, which was broken partly because it was unprottable, but also because of Soul Reaping. ANet thought that maybe making blood magic do small chunks of damage over an extended period of time would balance the skills. Unfortunately, they were wrong. Blood magic is poorly thought out. Big life steal chunks were removed, but small chunks are overpowered as well - however, if the recharge is increased as it needs to be, the skills will be too junk to use period. The lack of a "solid middle ground of balance" hints that the entire concept is poorly designed.
 * @Gordon, I don't think simply making blood magic prot-able would fix much. The current life steal build in HA and GvG has 7 necros - even if their damage was prot-able, they'd just bring 7 copies of Gaze of Contempt or Rend Enchantments and the problem would be back in full force. I think it just needs to die. Rework the entire line, or make those skills only that good in PvE. - Auron 12:43, 4 October 2008 (UTC)

About life stealing
I've always stuck by the belief that bloodspike in particular was never overpowered. The damage was impossible to prot, but not impossible to infuse (or heal in any way), which made 8v8 teams very likely to beat it. Even have gotton a big chunk of my fame from bloodspike, I have always considered it inferior to all-around builds.

However, the introduction of so many new skills, most of which are near copies of each other, the skills can be spammed more. Old bloodspike builds could spike 3 times every 20 seconds, pretty slow. New bspike teams can spike every 2 seconds, in addition to angorodon's gaze making their skills cost close to nothing, so they can spike for an entire match without pausing for a break.

Life stealing in and of itself is fine, and it's a rather cool (and essential) mechanic of fantasy games. The problem we're seeing today is that the bspike builds are simply too fast. Even skilled infusers can catch every spike and be out of energy within 20 seconds of the match. Removing the mechanic from the game is drastic, and probably impossible. The better solution is to change some of the life stealing skills to have different effects, and upping the recharge on the remaining skills so bspike teams can't spike as frequently. ~Shard  04:03, 14 October 2008 (UTC)
 * Or maybe making WoD balanced so in GvG you don't have 8 seconds of 0 healing. 90.212.161.78 06:41, 22 October 2008 (UTC)
 * I think more recently, Vampiric Spirit has become a problem not because of how much damage it deals but because it heals you. It has now been nerfed a bit, but it still gives a lot of health regeneration (I think it ignores degen). This means that BSpike teams can generally manage with only one healer for quite a while (by which time they may well have won) 82.3.255.222 16:58, 24 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Yes, but the greatest problem was always angorodon's. Vamp Spirit only works because of angorodons. Angorodon's=unlimited energy at the cost of repeatedly bleeding yourself (don't even have to, because balanced teams use conditions anyway). Angorodon's+Vamp Spirit=Unlimited energy+no drawback which is never a good thing. Notice how bloodspike is called bloodspike? Bcuz it used to b a spike, which had not very high damage for a spike, but was decent because it was unprottable. Even with the addition of Vampiric Spirit it wasn't overly OP, because of e-management issues (if your spike is caught by infuse, you have no energy management). However, angorodon's gaze gave b-spikers limitless energy. You can give yourself bleeding for high damage (Blood Drinker) which in turn funds energy for spamming Vamp Spirit for heals. Rinse and repeat, taking out chunks of the enemy monks' energy along the way. Even though they made a slight step in the right direction, they ultimately failed because angorodon's was actually buffed (more energy at the cost of less damage= sweet, I can spam life siphon even more like a noob). Ultimately, blood spike will always be viable as long as Angorodon's Gaze provides near unlimited energy (unless they nerf life steals to like 15 dmg).Crimmastermind 07:15, 25 November 2008 (UTC)
 * And because of Soul Reaping. ~Shard  [[Image:User Shard Sig Icon.png]] 07:32, 25 November 2008 (UTC)