Necrotic

Well I cannot comment on all of them as my blood sucker build was more of a PvEr and I didnt get the time to make a PvP version, however I can say that Life siphon is what I used often along with Vampiric Gaze.....though Vampiric Touch is a skill and doesnt have a casting time (.75 sec is very fast)....15 energy is nearly half my pool at the moment. Which is why I have gaze in my skillbar instead.

iczer

Plus Vampiric Gaze is a ranged spell. I played heavy necro/monk builds this last BWE and I found that life siphon fit into all of my builds as well as life transfer on some if them. The life draining/returning from life siphon and life transfer stacks as well I tried using faintheartedness and the 3 appeard to stack the health degeneration on the oppoents as best as I could tell. Couple those spells with the mending monk enchantment and your necro would have a pretty hefty health regen 90% of a PvP fight.

The times I had major problems were when mesmers focused on either running me out of energy or causing me to take damage for casting (read Backfire for one).

-Iczer

Yukito Kunisaki

Yes, I'm aware of this. This game was designed specifically so that there is no God-build. [yay]

Everything can be countered and that's fine by me! ^_^

Vamp Gaze huh? Anyone else know about the other health stealers?

Kraav

My experiences with the various Lifetap style spells are as follows (March Weekend)

Life Siphon: Great PVE spell all around. Good duration with ok life regen. Think of it as a Necro's Mending. For pvp I didnt like it due to the 2 second cast time.(I play a War/Nec), for caster classes this spell is far better.

Life Transfer: Nice life regen but duration and recast time are not so hot. Again 2 second cast time = too long for a warrior trying to do melee damage. Casters will like this one more and it stacks with Life Siphon.

Vampiric Gaze: This spell is tight. 1 sec cast time RANGED Lifetap for decent damage with good recast and fair energy usage. Best lifetap spell currently in game imo.

Vampiric Touch: Useless now. Utterly useless. 5 MORE energy then Gaze limited to TOUCH range and only deals 10 more damage then Gaze and it shares the same recharge time. Junk.

Unholy Feast: Nice if you can get your enemies packed together. This really shines then. Otherwise it suffers from long recast. Energy usage seems correct.

Shadow Strike: Deals damage first then it checks if target is over 50% before it deals its Lifetap.(appeared that way to me). I would rather have a reliable lifetap on demand as opposed to only works if over 50% blah blah. Damage (if you count the lifetap damage) for the energy cost is good and recharge time is nice as well. Only slot this if you are looking for a filler skill imo. Cast time for a warrior/nec at 2 secs is not good.

Sausaletus Rex

Life Tapping skills can be measured in efficiency much like a damage dealing skill or a heal can. It's just that you're both healing and damaging at once. You can use such a skill as a heal or as a nuke or as somethign in-between. But the general measure of what's best is a) what gives the most effect for the least amount of resources - ie what's the best bang for the buck and b) what gives the best effect - ie what's the biggest stick to swing. The first is good for when you want to use it often or over time. The second for when you have but one shot at using such a skill. It's the difference between Healing Breeze and Heal Other, basically. And, like energy tapping skills it's not so much the raw healing or raw damage but the "swing" - the health you take away is health you gain so you're creating a wide gap between you and your target.

Life Siphon costs 10 energy and takes 2 seconds to cast. It's got a low cooldown of 2 as well but that duration is much longer than that recharge so you can't use it again against the same target for anything but you can use it against multiple targets. The more you cast, though, the more it costs - if you cast Life Siphon as often as you could, every 4.75 seconds with aftercast, you'd spend well over 2 energy every second, far more than you could regenerate. But for each target you get 1~3 pips worth of regeneration for you and degeneration for them. Even at Blood 0 when it lasts for 12 seconds you can put up about 2 Life Siphons before the first elapses so you'll be running at about 3 regeneration or 6 health per second or HPS and the equivallent amount of DPS. At Blood 12, 22 seconds and 3 pips, you'll be able to have about four or five running constantly but you'll only gain up to 10 pips worth of healing or about 20HPS while your DPS will be higher - although nowhere near impressive.

That supposes you have enough targets to make it worthwhile of course. Against a single target you spend, at Blood 0 10 energy to get 2HPS/DPS over 12 seconds or about .8 energy per second for 24 health for you and from your opponent. At Blood 12 it's 10 energy every 22 seconds for 6HPS/DPS or about .45 energy every second for 132 health. Not bad but keep in mind it's spread out over a long time frame. You can do much better both for damage and for healing for that amount of energy than, at best 20~30HPS/DPS.

Life Transfer is similar. Although the recharge is such that you'll never cast it on more than one target at a time without a lot of help (Say Oath Shot or Mantra of Recovery or somthing) and because it's a big enough regeneration you'll hit that 10 pip cap easily if you do, so why bother? Anyhow, it's 10 energy, a 2.75 casting time, and a 30 second recharge. It lasts 6~11 seconds and does 3~7 pips worth or regen/degen. At worst (Blood 0) it's 10 energy for 3 pips for 6 seconds or five energy pips (1.66 en) for 6HPS/DPS or 36 health. At best (Blood 12) it's 10 energy for 7 pips for 11 seconds or .90 energy per second for 14HPS/DPS or 154 health. That's somewhat better than Life Siphon - less DPS but you do it quicker and for less energy - until you take into account the recharge timer. 30 seconds means that you can recast it once eveyr 32.75 seconds and that 154 health is spread over that time frame. Life Siphon can be quickly recast so in the time you can cast Life Transfer twice you can cast Life Siphon nearly 3 times. That's about 396 health versus 308. A bit more energy but you can also cast Siphon on multiple targets and raise the damage and healing that way. Still, neither is particularly impressive. It's not so much that you have gaps in your draining when you're not healing so much as that Life Siphon can be cranked out a lot better to do more healing/damage. They're both health/damage over time so it's not so much about how much you're doing when as it is the overall effect. Neither is going to be saving your life when you come under heavy fire, it's only going to lighten the burden on your healer and, at that, Life Transfer is the inferior option.

Shadow Strike is a bit simpler to deal with as it's a single hit, a single damage or heal. It's conditional, it's only work when that target's *initial* health is over 50% - it doesn't matter if the first half of Shadow Strike's damage dips them below 50% just what their hit points were when you cast it. It's 10 energy with a 2.75 casting time and an 8 second recharge. You'll spend roughly .93 energy ever second casting it as often as you can. It deals 12~41 damage and may steal another 12~41 health. So, at worst it's 12 damage for 10 energy or 1.2 damage per point of energy. If that's a health steal it's 2.4 damage per energy and 1.2 healing per energy. At best it's 41 damage for 10 energy of 4.1DPE. A steal and it's 8.2DPE and 4.1HPE. In terms of DPS, it's up to 82 damage in 2.75 seconds or 30 in burst damage, half that in burst healing. Any way you look at it it's a poor damage dealing spell and a poorer healing spell. It is a swing of 123 health but you only get 33% of that.

Unholy Feast has that, by now, conundrum of "nearby" range. It's PBAoE and, when I've used it in the past, has a range about that of Heal Area or something along those lines - more than adjacent but still pretty close. It's 15 energy with a 1.75 casting time and a 30 second recharge. And you steal 8~34 health from every enemy "nearby". So, it scales up the more enemies you have around. If you have two enemies it's 200% as effective as if you had one. Three, 300% over one. And so on. So, you start with one enemy and you can figure it out from there. 15 energy every 31.75 seconds is about .47 energy per second or roughly an energy every 2 seconds. For that, at worst you get 8 health or .53HPE and the equivalent in terms of damage. In terms of DPS it's a burst of 4.5 damage in a second. At best, it's 34 health or 2.26HPE/DPE and a bust of 19.5 health. Which is, of course, trash, so it's a good thing it scales up. Against two targets it's up to 4.52HPE, three it's 6.75HPE, four it's 9HPE. The DPS rises similarly although as it's AoE the damage is spread out over multiple targets so it's not going to overly worry anyone. The recharge is really what hurts here as you can only get that burst of healing every 31.75 seconds and if you have four or five targets nearby to make it worthwhile (That's up to 170 health or a pretty decent chunk of healing) you're probably not going to have that long at all before you need other sources of healing or defense. Be nice on a tank but it's too expenisve an energy drain for just a little bit of healing, if you ask me.

Vampiric Touch is nice and simple, there's no scaling or conditions. Of course, your target needs enough health or you won't get the full effect but we're talking ideals here anyway. However, it's also a skill not a spell anymore and I'm uncertain if it has an aftercast still. My instinct is to say, yes, it does, but I'll do it both ways to be certain. It's 15 energy, 3/4 of a cast, and 5 seconds recharge. To steal 13~62 health. Without after cast that's 15 energy every 5.75 seconds or 2.6 energy each and every second. With that's 15 energy in 6.5 seconds or 2.3 energy each and every second. In other words, well above and beyond any regeneration. For that, at worst you get 13 health or .86HPE/DPE. It's a burst of 17 health without aftercast and 9 with. At best it's a 62 health skill or 4.13HPE/DPE. Aftercast-less burst is 83 health and aftercast burst is 41.3 damage in a second. What's good here is that health swing, which is a 124 shift in a matter of seconds - at the end of things you're opponent has, relatively, 124 less health than they started with.

Vampiric Gaze is almost exactly the same, just ranged and a spell so it definitely has an after cast while it also has a bit longer casting time. 1 second (1.75 with that aftercast) as opposed to .75. Otherwise it's 15 energy with a 5 second recharge to steal 13~62 health. That's 2.22 energy spent each second if you're spamming it. Health and damage per energy remain the same. As does that health swing. From .86~4.13. Burst is a bit lowered at 7.5 at Blood 0 and 35.5 at Blood 12. Either way, it's not very impressive in terms of damage or healing over time, either.

Now, since such skills do both healing and damage you can't realy compare them to straight heals and straight damage skills. Of course Orison of Healing's going to be better than Vampiric Gaze, it should be because it's solely for healing. In the same way, Lightning Orb's going to be better, too, because all it does is damage. Life Taps hover around 50%~75% effectiveness compared to such such single-use skills. Which sounds about right, in theory. In practice, though, they're not all that good. They deliver healing and damage but do so either poorly or so expensively that it's generally better to just forget about them. A few hundred hit points here and there doesn't matter if you're taking heavy fire, you'll need thousands of points worth of healing or defense, and all you do by running a Siphon or using a Vampire is to just reduced, very slightly, the burden on the healer who'll save you. Concentrate on healing or concentrate on damage, don't bother with half-measures because they're mediocre at both. And being mediocre gets you nowhere but back in the lobby.

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In my day, we didn't have virtual reality. If a one-eyed razorback barbarian warrior was chasing you with an ax, you just had to hope you could outrun him.

Kraav

Vamp Touch is a skill now?

Hmmm, that might make me re-think my stance on this spell er.. skill.

Sausaletus Rex

Yep, that was changed this past weekend. Although, I forgot that the damage ranges are different between Gaze and Touch now.

All the energy stuff is the same but it's 18~52 with Vampiric Gaze. That's 1.2~3.5HPE/DPE. A burst of 10~30 health. And a swing of 36~104. Worse than touch but you don't have to be up close to use it.

__________________
In my day, we didn't have virtual reality. If a one-eyed razorback barbarian warrior was chasing you with an ax, you just had to hope you could outrun him.

Kraav

Rex:

Gaze energy is 10 per cast not 15.

Scaphism

Yeah I went through the effort of crunching the numbers on this stuff, even though it goes against my nature as a liberal arts major.

I dunno how to make a pretty table, so I'm going to improvise:
All values assume level 12 blood magic, you can figure out damage and health swings on your own. This is mostly concerned with how much healing these skills actually give you.

Name...........Energy...Cast Time...Recycle....Net Health...Net Health/min.....Type
Life Siphon......10............2............2.......... ..132...........Up to 1200.......HOT
Life Transfer....10............2...........30.......... .154.............~300.............HOT
Shadow Strike..10............2............8...........*41 ........Up to 281..........Instant(Conditional)
Vampiric Gaze...10...........1.............5...........52.. ..............542............Instant
Vampiric Touch..15.........3/4...........5............62................646.... .......Instant

Ensign would probably insist on a column for amount healed per time spent casting, and I have that, but it makes the improvised table ugly.

Unholy feast depends entirely on how many enemies you have around you. If you're not facing multiple enemies, you're not using it optimally.
Barbed Signet does not count, IMO, because it only nets you 4 health (or 0 or even negative health if you have vigor runes) per cast.


Also, Shadow Strike: This is totally conditional healing, and as monk, I hate unreliable healing. I don't really like this skill, but the cost is down from 15 energy to 10, so it's less bad than it used to be. My advice for anyone wanting to use it: Don't use it. If you insist, use your health sacrifice skill at the start of battles, then immediately use Shadow Strike. It's effectiveness, as a nuke and a heal, plummets as the battle wears on. Spending 10 energy for an 82 point nuke and 41 point heal is a good deal. Spending 10 energy for a 41 point nuke is worse than ice spear. Think about that.

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Yukito Kunisaki

Wow, good thing I'm a technical major at my college lol. Lots of nifty stuff here, many thanks to you all for such distinct and intricate information. Just goes to show that video games such as this aren't for kids anymore!

Damn, the next skills spotlight can be placed with this thread lol.