Talents
- Putrefy – A necessity in any build, our bread and butter. This will tick down on the enemy’s life as we throw our other spells at them. Its damage and time can be increased through supplemental rubies.
- Vampirism - This spell has changed the most this patch when compared to our whole time here in game. This spell is now always a 2 second cast unless affected by necropotency, and has a 30 second cool down until you get rubies to decrease cast time and in combination of other spells further reduce Cool Down. This Spell generates blood drops which summoners utilize for most of our heals and a damage spell called Howl of Death.
- Blood Injection – With changes that came a couple patches ago you may respec your character for free through level 15. Until then this will be your first heal, I do recommend grabbing this till level 15 to use while leveling but get rid of it before leveling to 16, then grab the heal Dark Renewal at level 18.
- Blood Aegis – Through the entire game this is a Necessity, no if’s, ands, or buts, because this will save your life more times than you can count. I leveled up with R3 Blood Aegis; however R2 is completely acceptable as well. It’s the difference of 10 shields vs. 8 shields. It increases your armor by a percentage, and it prevents spell interruptions. With a choice of rubies, you can regenerate Aegis with gaining drops of blood, or even require 1 second intervals between the reduction of each barrier.
- Hellion – Your best friend, your truest companion, your stalker that would take a bullet for you. Your hellion is your single greatest asset leveling up as a summoner. It will tank for you, disarm players you are pvp’ing, take agro from you to let you heal, and so much more. Each pet has it benefits but from levels 7 – 55 this is the pet of choice when starting out. In pvp this pet has 2 special abilities, first of which is knock down. The 2nd ability works rather nice specifically on melee classes which is Disarm.
- Fear – This spell put summoners on the list for pvp contenders when used properly. With each rank the cool down is reduced, with rubies included you can spam this treasure once every 21 seconds at rank 3 fear.
- Dark Pact – I have found myself commonly having dark pact at rank 2 acid dps, and rank 3 for full healing and vamp pvp. While out of combat it will generate drops of blood for you to a certain limit. You can cast it in combat, sacrificing a percentage of life for 5 blood drops. With higher rank you consume less health for the 5 blood drops, and the amount of blood generated out of combat increases.
- Fiend – A change that came with the patch is that acid builds are contenders for leveling up and endgame content. The fiend (and eventually abomination) are the pet of choice for acid builds because they have a choice of single target and Area of Effect attacks that do decent damage, adding that extra "nudge" to your dps. Unlike the hellion the fiend is rather squishy, so you would do well to keep it close by to avoid random area of effect attacks that would kill off your pet.
- Plague of Mending – This little beauty has always been a great asset to summoners. Our only Area of Effect heal and it's a heal over time. As the name might suggest, it does need to be "infected" into fellow party members. You cast this spell on a target, and spread to friendly targets (in party) within range.
- Dark Renewal – The patch changed this spell rather nicely, it no longer requires drops of blood to cast, you just need enough mana to cast it. Though the initial heal is reduced from what it once was, this nifty single target heal over time works rather nicely combating the effects of damage. Another plus side to this spell is you can cast it on any number of players, have a raid of 24 people? No problem! If you have the mana you can cast Dark Renewal on all 24 people individually.
- Volatile Infection – This is our only area of effect damage spell in our possession, but it does the trick quite nicely. When an enemy is infected with this spell, all enemies around them will also be infected if they are within proximity. When each infection goes off it damages the target AND 3 other targets within a 10 yard radius. So if you have 4 creatures all with Volatile infection spread on them, each creature will receive their own damage + the damage from each of the other creatures infected. Effectively mathematically it's: X dmg + X + X + X = dmg each creature will take. So it cleans up the field rather nicely!
- Reanimation – You single target “Oh Crap” healing spell, I like to have it prepped ahead of time usually. A change since previous patches, it now is randomized how many drops of blood it will cost. It can consume 1, 2 or 3 drops of blood, the more it consumes the more it heals. Another change is now it is instant cast with no cool down, so effectively a heal spell you could spam if your life depended on it (as long as you have blood filled and mana of course).
- Lurker – The lurker has never been the pet of choice if you want a pet for damage, however it is its other abilities that attract the masses. Every time the lurker attacks with blood meal it transfers some of the life it took from the enemy into blood for your blood bank. The amount of blood it provides depends on the rank of your lurker and how many Master Summoner rubies you get. The other attack the lurker has at its disposal is a silence. This spell works wonders specifically on casters. This I find is the pet of choice with either a PvP Vamparism or Full Healing build.
- Siphoning Fever – A costly spell, but if you're in need of an extra blood fix during a long battle it can be worth the cast. While on a target it remains for 90 seconds counting down to when its large attack hits. In the mean time it provides you a percentage of a chance to gain additional Blood Bank rubies. Should you grab the additional rubies in the grid it also adds Damage over time to Siphoning Fever while on its host.
- Aura of Potency – Nice little aura that gives you 15% increase to your damage at rank 3, but with a downside of reducing the effectiveness of your heals. For leveling this is a very nice talent to get, as it’s our only aura at the moment. Do not bother with it when you have a FH build, but with an acid build I wouldn’t pass it up.
- Rise From the Dead – This involuntary spell is our "2nd life" as it were. With the patch this spell did change, now at rank 3 it resurrects you with 30% of your maximum health and mana to stay in the fight. But this can happen only once every 5 minutes, unless take the rubies that reduce this amount or die during this time span, in which case the debuff cool down is removed after that resurrection.
- Blood Shot – Advanced from Blood Injection, just like its predecessor it is not worth getting unless you are FH build. This talent is Blood Injection just heals a bit more.
- Life Tap – Advanced from Vampirism, this replaces it as the spell of choice when using a Vamparism build as it does more damage.
- Decay – Advanced from Putrefy, this replaces it as the spell of choice when using any dps build as it does more damage than its predecessor.
- Abomination – Advanced from Fiend, when you reach endgame if you use the fiend the recommended spec is to have R3 Fiend and further get R3 abomination as the replacement as the DPS is much better.
Blood Bank