what happened to kaoms heart?

i played this game last time back in 2014 or something, then i quit. i recall 1000 life kaoms was going for 1 mirror or above, and non legacy kaoms (500 health and fire damage one) was still 20 ex at least. i recall even after i quit, i occasionally look at items in this game, and the 1000 life one was going for over 1000 ex.

what happened to the price? 1000 life becoming non legacy shouldnt make the price collapse this hard? they should still be going for 20d, at least 10d? i just bought one for my merc for 20c, its shocking how cheap it has become. is it just useless now because energy shield builds are far stronger than life builds?

Several reasons, really...

- Life rolls on rare body armor (and other equipment slots) are greater than ever
- Base defenses on rare body armors are better than ever
- Life nodes on the tree are not as good as they were back then
- There are SO many defensive options these days, that a high life pool isn't as important as it was back then. Back then, your life pool was your main defensive source. Now, you have so many layers to choose from.
- Socket pressure is also probably bigger than it was back then

So, to sum it up; nothing has happened to Kaom's Heart, but a lot has happened to the game. The game has just... Powercreeped away from the good, ol' Kaom's. It doesn't have anything to do with ES either, as life builds don't even run Kaom's, except certain life-stacking builds.

It's no longer super rare and much better items exist. That's all there is to it, really.

If you believe Poe Ninja,1% of players are using the new Kaom's.
Penance brand or RF mostly.
GGG raised his old meme item to "mid level unique."

I'd say the biggest reason is more need for sockets.

There is an abundance of new "tech" that nearly every build needs/tries to fit in, which puts additional socket pressure. Back in the day, it was fairly difficult to fill all sockets on many builds simply because there was nothing to use. I remember many builds having multiple empty sockets, even running around with portal in one of them. Now? The only time I ever actually use portal is swapping it out while it sits in my inventory. There's rarely any empty sockets anywhere. And if there were...then I'd probably go for abyss socket items rather than give up my 6L chest.


But yea, like others said, another main culprit was the doubling+ of native life rolls on rare armors. I can't remember the t1 roll back in the day, but I'm pretty sure it was sub-100. Nowadays t1 combo gets over 200 life, plus you can get max% on top of that. The gap is simply not as wide. AND body armour mods are some of the most powerful mods on any gear piece.

I slapped a Kaom's on my Merc for more tankiness. he's not concerned about sockets, after all. =^[.]^=