Life Siphon

Siphon health from your foe. Healing effectiveness increases if you are bleeding. Damage increases if your foe is bleeding. — In-game description

Animation

Life Siphon

Profession

Necromancer (skill list)

Weapon

Main hand dagger

Activ. type

Channeled

Game link

API

69302

“

0.75¾  8  

Life Siphon

Siphon health from your foe. Healing effectiveness increases if you are bleeding. Damage increases if your foe is bleeding.

 Damage (9x): 990 (2.7)^?

 Damage (9x): 828 (2.25)^?

 Damage Increased While Bleeding: 50%

 Damage Increased While Bleeding: 20%

 Pulse Heal: 450 (0.1)^?

 Pulse Heal: 300 (0.1)^?

 Healing Increased While Bleeding: 20%

 Range: 600

— In-game description

Related traits

Blood Magic

• Overflowing Thirst — Gain life force when you strike a foe with a dagger.
• Blood Bank — Gaining health grants a proportionate amount of barrier. Conversion amount increases while at full health.

Soul Reaping

• Vital Persistence — Gain Vitality. Your incoming healing is increased.

Mechanics

• Performs an initial strike, after which blood is siphoned from the target. If the initial strike hits, all subsequent strikes are guaranteed to hit.
  • If the initial attack misses, is blocked, or is evaded, there will be no subsequent strikes.
• This skill deals strike damage, despite its similarity to life stealing effects.
• Healing while not suffering from  Bleeding:

 Healing: 4,050 (0.9)^?

 Healing: 3,000 (0.9)^?

• Healing while suffering from  Bleeding:

 Healing: 4,860 (0.9)^?

 Healing: 3,240 (0.9)^?

Version history

For a detailed skill history, see here.

Patch	Changes
June 27, 2023	This skill is no longer channeled and will instead perform a single attack. Enemies struck by the initial attack will be dealt damage over time, and the user will be healed when damage is dealt.
February 14, 2023	Reduced cooldown from 10 seconds to 8 seconds in PvP and WvW. Increased damage bonus against bleeding foes from 20% to 50% in PvE only.
August 23, 2022	(PvE only) Recharge reduced from 10 seconds to 8 seconds.
February 25, 2020	Competitive content update: (Competitive split) Reduced power coefficient per strike from 0.3 to 0.25. Reduced pulse base heal from 450 to 300.
July 10, 2018	Reduced the casting time from 3 seconds to 1.75 seconds. This skill will now cancel if the necromancer faces away from their target.
May 08, 2018	The cooldown of this skill is no longer split between game modes and will now use the lower 10-second cooldown in all modes.
March 27, 2018	Reduced the cooldown from 12 seconds to 10 seconds in PvP and WvW.
August 08, 2017	Path of Fire pre-patch: This skill has been unsplit from PvP and now uses the higher healing value in all game modes. Fixed a bug that caused this skill to go on higher (normal) recharge when interrupted while Quickening Thirst is equipped.
June 20, 2017	The base healing of this skill has been increased by 25.7% in PvP only.
May 16, 2017	Gains 20% increased healing if cast while you are bleeding. Deals 20% more damage to bleeding foes.
July 26, 2016	The channel time of this skill has been reduced from 3.75 seconds to 2.75 seconds.
June 23, 2015	Specialization update: The effects of siphoning skills and traits have been increased by 20%.
November 04, 2014	Increased this skill's base healing by 25%, and increased the scaling with healing power by 75%. Fixed a bug in which this skill increased by 25% instead of 20% when traited with Bloodthirst.
April 15, 2014	Updated the skill fact to scale correctly with healing power.
March 26, 2013	Updated skill facts.
October 01, 2012	This skill now properly applies damage at its intended range of 600.
August 28, 2012	Game release: Life Siphon has been added to the game.

Trivia

• A Guild Wars skill bears the same name as this skill.