So, Siphon life is kinda garbo in comparison to the other two talents in the same tree. It does less damage then corruption and the healing you get from it is virtually non-existent. Now you could argue to pick it because of the bonus damage from malefic Rapture, but I believe in the long run the damage increases to either corruption or agony overcome that.
So the ability is called SIPHON LIFE, yet it feels more like it should be called “Trickle a bit o life” because of the measly 30% we get off it. Jack that sucker up to 100% life steal and we have a real competitor on our hands. To put this into perspective here is what it does now for me.
I have 5k hp in the 30-39 pvp bracket. It does about 50 damage every 2.5 seconds. Sounds nice right? Corruption does 37 damage every 1.7 seconds. Which you don’t have to be a math genius to see Siphon life does less damage. Now that same siphon life is giving me a whopping… 15 health every 2.5 seconds. Kinda pathetic tbh for an ability called Siphon Life. Crank that bad boy up to 100% and we have something. 50 health every 2.5 seconds. The ability only lasts 15 seconds so in its time it will have healed me for roughly 350 hp as opposed to the 105 it currently heals.
As I said, the ability is called SIPHON LIFE, but the amount you actually get is at best a trickle of life that I regain while sneezing. Make it actually drain some life and increase survivability a wee bit more.
on the one hand it’s the go-to for ST for a reason and it does blow the other 2 talents up in strict ST scenarios. on the other hand it feels like it compromises too much.
in the context of the game as it exists it does it’s job admirably, but that job is mostly “being a dot for MR”. in a wider context, it doesn’t feel like a great button since it’s a used GCD for just pumping MR numbers.
can we dismantle Darkglare, retune, readdress, if things still feel screwy dismantle MR, retune, and then readdress Siphon Life? because while i agree i don’t think SL itself is the problem. it’s the underlying design of today’s aff. aff just isn’t a rot spec and going nuts buffing DoTs in a class that honestly doesn’t use the DoTs themselves to do the damage doesn’t end up working that well.
other than that ohh hell yeah, it doesn’t feel strong and imo you are correct that beefing up the life steal component is the best first step to reworking SL to be better.
I’m in favor of making its healing stronger or adding leech to the target if it’s your main target or something like that as a more decisive difference. Adjusting its damage just makes it a math problem.
Imo the damage is fine as is, just make it heal for 100% of the damage it does and make the healing returns diminish past 1-3 targets so you don’t end up dotting like 3-5 things and getting 5% hp back per second or something.
Problem number 1, thats not the level abilities are balanced around.
Problem 2, sims don’t care what you believe.
Problem 3, you cant compare adding a dot that wasnt there before taking the talent and contributing to mr damage to the damage tick of an ability that’s already there and whose talent serves the main purpose of saving globals on reapplication.
Problem 4, if you’re going to try and use the definition of words to mean something in a spell, you should knpw what the word means. You act like siphon means flood which it does not. It’s just a transfer.
It’s not pure dps, it’s not a pure heal, it’s both and will only be average at both.
Answer 1: I know very well that’s not what level abilities are balanced around, but they usually serve as an indicator what you can expect closer towards endgame.
Answer 2: Show me the sims.
Answer 3: I’m not comparing it to the damage tick that already exists, I’m comparing it to the change in damage from the other talents in comparison. The other talents are statistically better.
Answer 4: Then we might as well call it Trickle life. I know exactly what a siphon is, and I know what siphoning is. It’s a lot more than 30% that’s for sure. 100% health return off of Siphon Life is not a flood of health. It barely makes up what 5% of my current health stated? Getting back roughly 300 hp over the course of 15 seconds isn’t gamebreaking lol. The transfer should be a 1:1 ratio if its a siphon, thats how siphons work.
Yeah, it sort of worked like this in Wrath too but Siphon Life increased Corruption damage by 5% and restored 40% of the damage done as health so we didn’t have to waste an extra GCD.