Feedback:User/Widowmaker/Blood Magic Skill Changes

Blood Magic gives the Necromancer the ability to deal damage and heal simultaneously. However, it's too powerful for spiking and too useless otherwise (mostly since it got nerfed thanks to the spiking). It also has a lot less skills than other lines, such as Curses. By moving a couple of extra skills into Blood Magic and reworking a few of the existing ones to increase utility, Blood Magic could become a useful line for Balanced Teams or Rainbow Spikes, for example, while still keeping some of the utility Curses has.

10 1 15 20

Elite Hex Spell. For  seconds, target foe and nearby foes suffer -2 Health degeneration, and you steal  Health from those foes each second.


 * Life Transfer is a decent skill, offering heavy degeneration and a lot of healing. Though powerful in small arenas such as RA, it pales in comparison to skills such as Lingering Curse (still a bit OP, admittedly) thanks to the fact that it can't be maintained. By slightly improving the recharge-to-duration ratio, this becomes a little more attractive. More importantly, though, is the AoE increase, which will make this an actual contender in areas such as HA, though an energy cost increase accompanies this to keep it from being OP.
 * UPDATE: By keeping the duration to recharge ratio low but changing most of the health degeneration to a more powerful stackable life steal per second, we get a skill which allows powerful pressure to be applied while healing the caster, but only for about half the time, meaning the player has to chose when it is best to use it.

15% 1 1⁄4 15

Elite Spell. You gain Energy.


 * Offering of Blood is not popular since you're using your whole elite on an energy-management skill, and it damages you too. Given that Necromancers already have Soul Reaping and other energy-management options (e.g. Signet of Lost Souls, Angorodon's Gaze et.c), this isn't really a great trade-off. Even the old N/Rt healers would rather spec into Channeling and take Offering of Spirit (which is nearly as good even without a spirit until you get to higher ranks) than take this, when they could get a +1 Blood Magic rune too.
 * Simply decreasing the sacrifice cost might not make this skill see loads of play since it is, by it's very nature, something which isn't going to fit into many builds, but it would at least make it more comparable to OoS and encourage use on high-energy Blood Necroes.

10 1⁄2 3⁄4 12

Elite Spell. Steal  Health from target foe. If your Health is still below %, you gain 5 Energy and Ravenous Gaze recharges three times as fast.


 * Currently, Ravenous Gaze is like a conditional, elite Vampiric Gaze. This makes it a poor choice even as a survival skill, and it really drains your energy. By relaxing the condition to %, Ravenous Gaze is made into a more useable skill since the user doesn't have to be in as risky a position. To prevent massive spikes with this, I also suggest changing it from a large conditional steal to a conditional faster recharge - with an energy gain to mitigate the cost - essentially allowing you to spam it more if your health is low. By combining with sacrificing skills and possibly Masochism to fuel it, you could have a character who keeps his or her health around 66% while dealing a lot of damage - the trade-off would be the risk that you could get spiked. Either way, this seems as though it would be more useful than the skill which currently requires you to drop to below 50% health or get less stealing than Vampiric Gaze.
 * Thanks to the 1⁄2 3⁄4, this is also now a really good survival skill - as long as you have the energy - since you can use it every 4 seconds without it being easily interruptable.

(PvP) 10 1 15

Elite Spell. Steal Health from target foe and all adjacent foes. For each point you steal from a foe, that foe loses 1 health.

(PvE) 10 1 10

Elite Spell. Steal Health from target foe and all adjacent foes. For each point you steal from a foe, that foe loses 1 health.


 * OK, on reflection, I feel that though my previous suggestion for RG was an improvement, the way the skill works just isn't nice, and no matter of rebalancing is going to help. Thus I would instead change it to a simple life-stealing/damage skill. This is a bit boring, but is an easy way for a Blood Necro to provide a little pressure while getting a self-heal. Since this works a little like a ranged, elite Unholy Feast, a very powerful skill, I think this would be somewhere a PvE/PvP split might be in order. I also added an extra damage mechanic so the necro can harm foes without getting ridiculously large amounts of health - this also fits with the skill's theme, that you just want to keep stealing life since you're not getting healed that much for it. Thanks to new life-stealing counters, I doubt this will be OP, and if the initial life-steal is countered, so is the extra damage, meaning a Ravenous Gaze team spike shouldn't suddenly pop up.

Thanks to the 25/02/2010 Update, this skill has been buffed.

10% 1 3⁄4 7

Spell. Target foe and all nearby foes suffer from Weakness for seconds.

(Attribute: Blood Magic)

12% 1 1 8

Spell. Target foe and all nearby foes suffer from Weakness for seconds.

(Attribute: Blood Magic)


 * Curses can already Weaken foes with Enfeeble, and Blood Magic is lacking in utility. Given the name of the skill, it makes sense to move this over. Since Blood Magic is generally less used than Curses, I also feel that some minor buffs to both the PvP and PvE versions wouldn't hurt, to encourage use of the line.

15 1 12

Hex Spell. For seconds, whenever target foe hits with an attack, you steal up to  Health from that foe.

(Attribute: Blood Magic)


 * Again, a Curses skill which fits with the Blood Magic theme, and one which Blood Magic would benefit from a lot more than Curses would suffer from losing it (Curses still has many anti-melee skills, even if they all work differently to this). This would let a Blood Mage fill pretty much the same role as a Curser with a couple of anti-melee skills, an elite (such as Life Transfer, a sort of Lingering Curse which isn't OP) and perhaps a spike skill in spike teams.

8% 1 12

Signet. You steal up to Health from target foe. If that foe has more than 50% Health, you also inflict Bleeding for seconds.


 * This skill has atrocious activation and recharge times, and a character with 600 health will sacrifice 48 with this skill, gaining almost nothing from it. Thus, slashing the activation and recharge to something more sensible seems an obvious step forward. Adding Bleeding fits the theme and also gives it a bit of utility since it allows Necromancers to inflict the condition relatively easily (for example, for skills reliant on a condition). In terms of spiking, this steals the same amount of health as Vampiric Gaze but costs nothing, but keeping the recharge at 12 (higher than VG's 8) makes it less attractive. Plus, Blood Spike teams wouldn't be able to use Awaken the Blood with it without increasing the sacrifice to 12%, undermining one of their main advantages (the fact that they are hard to kill thanks to all the extra health they get).

The 25/02/2010 Update buffed this skill, and though I'm not certain it's enough to make it useful, it gives it a significantly better effect.

10% 1 1 4

Hex Spell. For 10 seconds, target foe suffers - Health degeneration and whenever you sacrifice Health, you steal health from that foe.


 * An essentially useless skill, Dark Pact currently damages you more than your target unless you have a really low health. Given the potential of the cool skill name, I feel a complete re-work is in order. There are many things you could do, but the suggestion above allows you to pressure a little with this as a degen hex, and to gain health when sacrificing, allowing you to use skills which might otherwise be too costly. By keeping the recharge low, this skill could also potentially trigger itself, meaning you can use it without having to fill up your bar with other skills, though of course that would let you get more benefit from it.

10% 1 1 15

Enchantment Spell. For 20 seconds, you have a damage reduction of and + maximum Health. When Demonic Flesh ends, all nearby foes take shadow damage and burn for  seconds.


 * Given that many Necromancer skills cause you to sacrifice a percentage of your health, increasing it is not that great. It is handy as an anti-spike skill, of course, but not with a 60-second recharge. Furthermore, a single Shatter Enchantment can absolutely destroy you. Halving the initial sacrifice and dramatically lowering the recharge makes this a lot more useable, and some damage reduction helps improve your defense much more. By adding a Dervish-like end effect, you have the option of letting it end to damage foes, but in doing so lower your own health, making you more vulnerable.

Thanks to the 25/02/2010 Update, this skill has been buffed.