Life Leech

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Delirii wrote:

You're playing a character that (probably) has an insane DPS/Damage per Hit. You know that Reflect exists, yet you chose to deal enough damage to kill yourself with Reflect. You can't blame GGG on that.

I can blame GGG when the precedent has been set for the past few years that you can simply use leech and resists and not have to worry about reflect.

Maybe you missed this part so let me bold it for you:

I have MAX resists: 75% reduced damage from reflect

I have 70% spell block, meaning on average only 30% of the reflects even hit me.

I have 20/20 life leech


Most importantly: This setup worked fine last patch and elemental reflect barely moved my ES, if at all.


GGG, Rory, whoever: Please respond as to what current in-game mechanic is available for CI elemental casters to keep their health up if 75% resist, 70% spell block, and 20/20 life leech cannot do it.

Eagerly awaiting your response to this lest I continue to assume someone made this last-minute half-assed decision to nerf leech without accounting for classes that cannot reach Vaal Pact.

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Delirii wrote:

And yes, LL is needed on almost every character, because it's too damn strong and LoH/Life Reg can hardly compete with it.

The problem rather is that there are no alternatives to generating Life/ES in any way. This change is fucking disgusting and just shows how hard they are trying to force hybrid based builds since those are the ones who dont have to give a shit about reflect, never hand and never will have.

Pure casters cant split their damage into partly physical, neither can they increase their leech in any way because there is no elemental damage leech. As a pure elemental based build, which is something every caster is, you end up with 81% max resistance and still lost health, even though using VP against a normal reflect pack. Thats not even considering -max or double reflect.

This change is so fucked up I cant even put it into words. They literally killed every single caster build apart from Burn which can only be played because they avoid reflect. First they killed totems, now basically any spam caster. Just because they are still butthurt about the LL RF Shavs situation.

There isnt a single decent argument why they are butchering casters like this. They dont even deal more damage than hybrids anymore. Less damage, less survivability. Whats the point in even letting them stay in the game? People are running Flameblast and Searing Bond for a reason, and thats not because the skills are so incredibly fun to use.

Well no reply on why they gutted life leech..or how elemental casters are meant to deal with reflect now.

Physical attack dps already had it made. They didn't even have to bother socketing a leech gem.

Vaal pact nerf...okay fine it was probably needed.

You assholes know damn well there is no workable option for CI casters who don't have vaal pact. No life on hit, likely no regen..

This was done just to keep people from completing the new content too easily.

I posted this in another thread but I'm going to repeat the example here so people understand why this leech nerf made CI ele casters unable to run reflect maps without vaal pact:

1000 Elemental aoe damage hits 10 monsters.
They each reflect 18% of that so 1800 damage reflected.
We'll assume max resists so that means 450 damage is instantly applied to you

Under the new leech mechanics only the damage on one of those monsters actually gives you leech.

That means you leech 8.9% of the 1000 or
leech returns 89 health to you over time

So you now take 450 damage per attack and leech back only 89.

How long does it take you to run out of health in this scenario? (Not long)

Keep in mind this is with 20/20 leech and max resists. Even if you factor in spell block it isn't enough.

CI characters cant use health potions and going along the top of the tree they can grab maybe 3% life regen and zealots if they really want to go out of their way. Still not enough though.

The bottom line:
CI elemental builds are no longer end game viable without vaal pact

There's no way GGG didnt forsee this and thats exactly why they increased access to the vaal pact node

Life leech mechanics are broken bad for fighting against packs. If you're intending to use this gem, go for Life on Hit instead.
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This support used to provide all the staying power you needed to tank as almost any kind of character. It was indeed broken, too much power for a single support slot. But a lot of specific builds were only possible because of that, such as melee using evasion/accro.

Now this support is near useless, as well as other sources of leech such as Marauder Blood Drinker and Shadow Mind Drinker (for mana). Warlord's Mark, with its great leech values, is barely adequate...

The solution would have been to keep leech mechanics as they were, but reduce the values on the Life Leech support and other sources of leech to balance them.

Post leech nerf, with a CI freezing pulse build with ghost reaver, I'm finding it really difficult to justify even using life leech. If you leech based on one creature getting hit by one spell, the entire premise of using LMP and freezing pulse is moot. The first guy I hit determines the leech... from one of the pulses because leeching doesn't queue up?

Casters do not get life leech or mana leech on gear, we get gems only, which means less damage for your 6 or 5L having to use them. Is there anyway to buff Ghost reaver to somehow make up for some of this leech nerf?

I would like it very much if the life leech was effective with totem keeping them alive a little longer.

If the life leech could give life via the totem to the caster it would be good too.. like a fraction of the original, half or even a third of it.. better than nothing at all.

Not sure where to post this or how to edit the wiki but it doesn't have lvl 21 life leech, which is 9.1% (that only shows 9%).

Leech rate must be higher and max leech must be increased to 90% of max life.