Curse

Lakdav · Aug 13, 2008, 06:52 AM // 06:52

Hi. I looked around but did not find a similar thread in here neither in sardelac, and i guess it catches more necro-attention here, so here it is...

Most ppl consider blood magic to be a weak attribute line, and most of these ppl can prove their point. My problem is, while they complain about it, no suggestions is heard.

I would like to ask you, who came to this thread for a reason, tell us what is your main problem with the current blood magic line, where these problems occur (General PvE, high end PvE, AB, RA, TA etc.), and finally your suggestion to make blood magic 'better'

Post suggesting how it would be present in GW2 are also welcome, but plz mention.

I would like to see reasonable posts here, if you want to comment somebody's suggestion, then post it with why you think it would be overpowered/ inbalanced/useless still.

Gift3d · Aug 13, 2008, 07:13 AM // 07:13

The only blood magic skills i see being used anywhere are either for wells ([well of blood][well of power]), for party support enchantments ([blood is power][blood ritual][order of pain][order of the vampire]), or for a few hexes that are sort of useful ([life siphon][life transfer][spoil victor]). The rest of the skills are pretty straight forward -- most simply steal life. So that's what i'll focus my point on, the life stealing skills...

Most of these have pretty high energy costs, most within 10-15 energy range. Lowering the energy cost would make touch rangers that much more annoying, no good. Making the damage higher would bring an influx of imbalanced blood spikes back into HA and GvG.

What i suggest is making blood magic skills better as a secondary utility attribute. For all life stealing skills in Blood Magic now, you need to have at least 13 blood magic to make them put out decent damage. Take [angorodon's gaze] for example. Instead of having it steal 10...34 health with 1...7 energy gain, make it 20...34 health with 3...7 energy gain, so it would be a semi-useful utility skill that can be made useful without having to max blood magic.

Axel Zinfandel · Aug 13, 2008, 07:52 AM // 07:52

The only weak part of blood magic nowadays is the life stealing skills. They are not exactly bad persay, just impractical nowadays. They are good at taking out single targets while healing you in the process, but neither of which are really good in PvE.

How would I change it? I wouldn't. I simply can't think of a decent way offhand that wouldn't either break PvP or make the life gain imbalanced for teams in PvE.

Even so, It has it's uses in PvE, just in certain missions.

Turbobusa · Aug 13, 2008, 07:59 AM // 07:59

Actually there was Moloch Vein's thread there.
It died due to updates not long after iirc.

Cathode_Reborn · Aug 13, 2008, 08:16 AM // 08:16

I thought it died cause of masses of useless suggestions and spam.

Lakdav · Aug 13, 2008, 08:48 AM // 08:48

Great so blood magic threads are doomed to die? hope not...
Anyway, what i was thinking. i agree mostly whith Gift3d. Might have some kind of crazy solulutin though.
Life-steal skills should be spells, so thouch rangers would be out, thus making the skills cost less energy would be more acceptable (though i dont know why it would be that important with soul reaping and other e-management skills around)
My main concerns in mind was the health saccing skills, dark pact and touch of agony...we know these spells are way too spammable to deal more dmg, even while sacrificing 10% of our max health each time. My idea is to make these skills deal the same amount of dmg that the caster sacrifices (+5-15 dmg or something to touch of agony perhaps cuz its touch range). That would make using blood magic damaging more of strategical, (combine with Awaken of blood and demonic flesh). the caster would suffer much from saccing, but might worth it by dealing more dmg. if seems overpowered, lets say it has half range, or/and less spammable recharge.

Xenomortis · Aug 13, 2008, 10:03 AM // 10:03

The trouble with a lot of the damaging or life steal skills in the Blood Magic line, it that they're far too simple and straight forward to use. Just having it so you cast a 1 second spell to steal life is pretty powerful, hence why A-Net had to make them so weak.

Making these skills more conditional would mean they could have their power improved and thus be more useful. Oppressive Gaze was on the right lines - it requires weakness on these foes to be of any use. Now however, I feel that the requirement of foes being below 50% health is a bit too much and akward to achieve. However, it is still potentially a powerful skill, being able to do 100 AoE armour ignoring damage and greatly healing the caster.
That's more of what we need in the Blood Line if we're going to have life stealing skills and armour ignoring stuff.

For example: [Blood Drinker]
I would suggest reducing the cast time to 1 second and mabye the recharge could be decreased too.
I think a function change could work along:
If target foe is bleeding, you steal 20..70? health. If target foe is poisened or diseased and you steal health, you become poisoned or diseased.

I would say that's a suitable malus and condition for a 5e spell with a shorter casting time, improved power and a lower recharge.

jayce · Aug 13, 2008, 10:38 AM // 10:38

I said it before, and my view pretty much has not changed. The life stealing mechanic needs addressing first before any real change to Blood Magic (The Necromancer's Damage Line lol) can be done.

Source

Quote:

Originally Posted by jayce

i think its safe to say that the life-stealing mechanic needs to meet a condition. its probably the only way to limit as much as possible any potential abuse. but it needs to be done in a way that does not render life-stealing near useless.

Ravenous Gaze is the skill that should probably define life-stealing in my opinion with a minor tweak. the skill is worthless unless, the condition is met, then it's dam near god-like. the life-stealing should follow suit. it is the best way that i can think of to limit abuse while, at the same time, finally being able to get some decent damage buffs out of the damage skills.

If you or your target is below 50% health, you steal health from that target. Otherwise you deal Shadow Damage.

this example does a few things. it can finish off targets after much of the work is done. it allows targets some protection against life-stealing spikes. it also makes abusing this mechanic extremely difficult. if you are going to sacrifice your own health for the purpose of abusing life-stealing, then you will have to go deep to do so.

my only concern is Infuse Health. but if anyone have any better ideas, then do tell. its just that i haven't seen one yet that is not too complex as far as possible coding that may have to be done.

Jayce Of Underworld

Moloch Vein · Aug 13, 2008, 10:53 AM // 10:53

Well here we go again. I don't hold much hope, but...

I and many others have said it before, I'll say it again. The life stealing mechanic needs to be COMPLETELY reworked. All life stealing should be changed to Shadow Damage healing the caster.

If we were to be nifty, I'd suggest an entirely new skill type. Gaze. A Gaze would be, basically, a Spell requiring line of sight.

Blindness would give the Gaze a 90% fail chance, just like hitting with a weapon. However, it would not be blockable and it wouldn't be possible to make it miss.

Xenomortis · Aug 13, 2008, 11:33 AM // 11:33

Quote:

Originally Posted by Moloch Vein

I and many others have said it before, I'll say it again. The life stealing mechanic needs to be COMPLETELY reworked. All life stealing should be changed to Shadow Damage healing the caster.

I'm somewhat inclined to agree. Life steal is pretty much the only thing that can bypass all forms of protection. That in itself makes it pretty powerful.
Currently, I believe it to be the only method of damaging someone else without technically doing damage bar health degen (this is from a game mechanic point of view).

Changing the life steal mechanic itself is a pretty drastic thing to do though, given the number of other places it pops up in.

Lakdav · Aug 13, 2008, 11:35 AM // 11:35

wow..i never seen that one coming...but i like the idea.
i see now you alrdy had much threads about this, and none of it changed a thing yet, so sorry for opening up a new one.

Moloch Vein · Aug 13, 2008, 02:34 PM // 14:34

It's no problem. It's not like I have a monopoly on Blood Magic threads.

Sleeper Service · Aug 13, 2008, 09:04 PM // 21:04

make blood line degen stack and increase the cap in PvE.

or

directly link blood life gain/loss to energy gain/loss when using it.

IE:

- you gain X energy per Y life stolen at Z blood attributes.
- you loose X life per X energy used at Z blood attributes.

of course more(nearly all) blood skills should be tied to self sacrifice in that case, making it an attribute line that makes the player constantly strive for more blood.

ties in well with the whole Necromancer way imo (Death feeds on corpses, Blood on blood, Soul reaping on general death.)

Rhamia Darigaz · Aug 13, 2008, 10:14 PM // 22:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lakdav

Life-steal skills should be spells, so thouch rangers would be out

expertise would still reduce the cost of vampiric touch and bite if they were spells, as they'd still be touch skills. see [mending touch]

on the thread topic, ppl who think blood magic needs a buff are ppl using life stealing skills. [order of pain] and [dark fury] raep hard.

Xenomortis · Aug 13, 2008, 10:22 PM // 22:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rhamia Darigaz

on the thread topic, ppl who think blood magic needs a buff are ppl using life stealing skills. [order of pain] and [dark fury] raep hard.

As I said in a different thread I believe, the majority of blood skills are either useless, or useful in very specific circumstances. That there, is ideal in a physical heavy team (Paragorns and Warriors especially), but near useless in a PuG.

The blood magic line has potential with damaging the opponants more directly, however with the current functionality of such skills, its pretty much wasted.

Cosmic Error · Aug 13, 2008, 10:39 PM // 22:39

Quote:

Originally Posted by Moloch Vein

I and many others have said it before, I'll say it again. The life stealing mechanic needs to be COMPLETELY reworked. All life stealing should be changed to Shadow Damage healing the caster.

This. The issue with life-stealing is that it doesn't count as damage, making it bypass all sorts of stuff like [protective spirit]. If life-stealing were more effective, skills that used it would be insanely overpowered.

Shadow damage, like life-stealing, ignores armor, but it can be protected against with stuff like Protective Spirit. This makes room for buffs to the overall damage Blood Magic skills do without killing game balance.

Example: [vampiric gaze]

Instead of making this skill do
"steal up to X health from target foe"
it could do:
"Deals X shadow damage to target foe. You are healed for X."
(I know it's probably worded wrong, but whatever.)

Xenomortis · Aug 13, 2008, 10:53 PM // 22:53

This is a major problem with Life Steal.

The only way I can see it being buffed is either to make it much more conditional, or to do what you and Moloch mentioned.

Except to make sense, it would have to be:
[Vampiric Gaze] - Target Foe loses X health. You are healed for each point of health lost.
That way, your health gain is clearly dependent on the damage done.

In its current form, Life Steal skills like this have few applications. They can bypass protection skills, they can damage Cyndr through the carapace and hurt the Great Destroyer when in the Lava.
However, it can't end Shiro's Meditation of the Reaper and it's pointless on the Lich where normal damage does better. It also doesn't benefit if a warrior carelessly uses Frenzy.

viper11025 · Aug 13, 2008, 11:07 PM // 23:07

I'd love ot see each skill cost only 5E and have a blood sacrifice and some kind of healing at the end or during the actual spells affect.

Example.
Well of power/5E/33%Hp/25sec Recharge
Exploit a nearby corpse, all allies within the well gain +1~3 energy regeneration and do +1~5% more damage. For each secound in the well allies gain +5~15 health. (Duration: 10 Secs)

Lakdav · Aug 14, 2008, 07:03 AM // 07:03

Having to sacrifice health when casting a life-steal spell seems to be a twisted solution, as you only steal back the life you just sacrificed, a little bit like Blood of the Agressor when foe attacks, thus making it a 5 energy cost spell, with a little risk (That enemy spike stikes when sacrificing). Still, it seems to be a more useful idea than the others i think. Sticking it with conditional effects is not really reliable, cuz when 2 players work together it will seem to be still overpowered, and when the condition is a foe's action its more like a mesmer gameplay. If conditional damage/life-steal is a solution, then the condition should be the enemy's or caster's health (shadow strike, blood drinker) and/or adrenaline (as in reality, adrenaline is in the blood, as some1 suggested in another thread before).

Also, i find it quite interesting, that you can steal life from anything. (mechanics dont have blood, neither life, they just 'work', undead doesnt have blood at least not liquid, 'drinkable' blood, and there are the ritu and ranger spirits), and even more interesting that no monk-skills deny life-steal (As it would further increase the 'tension' between the 2 classes philosophy). Changes in this would make life-steal more counterable, thus opening a way for some...buff/change..

-Makai- · Aug 14, 2008, 09:05 AM // 09:05

I feel that the biggest problem with Blood Magic is its primary function: keeping yourself alive, which is pointless when you should be doing something to help the team as a whole. The ability to steal life from (usually) a single foe doesn't matter if you have healers backing you up.

Blood Magic does have a few useful skills, as mentioned by Gif3d, but it's still not enough for general use.