Power Siphon

So I made a critical hit focused wand shadow. I had it linked to LMP, increased critical chance, and increased critical damage.For single targets I was using elemental hit linked to increased critical strike chance and increased critical damage. To supplement damage I ran as many elemental auras as I could handle. This was before 9.12 and it is only level 45 so I haven't had a chance to play around with fusillade etc.

As a primary skill it worked well enough (well, at least in act ruthless). I don't think it would be weak if your build was not focused on increasing critical strike chance and critical strike damage. So atm it is kind of niche skill. If that is the role the skill intended to fill it doesn't that much tweaking.

The problem I have with the skill is that the power charges gained from power siphon encourage you to continue spamming power siphon much more than they encourage you to use other skills. It makes the power charge system kind of dull.

How's this skill affected by fcr and ias?

I have done alot of testing with this skill and I can say YES it is viable as a primary skill, however it is intended as a physical attack and here's the problem, it's terrible at phys compared to elemental. Even after taking all the big phys nodes on the passive tree and having a high phys wand, it is no were near as powerful as not taking those nodes and going for elemental instead. I was getting around 20,000 dps as elemental build(<5% dmg being PHYS) and around 12000 as physical build(about 60% of which dmg was still from elemental dmg) Doesn't really work as intended or does it? I don't think it does.

IMO this skill should be considered a SPELL and not an Attack. Why? Because to support it with gems in it's current state required alot of green gems which is very hard to find on an ES armor, which i'm assuming most people will want to use while using this skill as it is an INT gem. You will want to use as supports Lesser multiple(green) Faster Attacks(green) Pierce(green) and Weapon Elemental dmg (red) with power siphon on a 5 link for the best effect. All of which supports require investments in other attributes. There is no combination of blue supports that will give you the power of this setup therefore I think it needs to be reworked as a Spell because the whole thing doesn't really fit properly as it stands. Not to mention the power charge bonus on the skill tree above the witch gives "spell damage per power charge" and considering this is the only skill that gives power charges and isn't a spell, it doesn't benefit from this and that makes no sense.

Another problem I have with this skill is the fact that dual weilding wands does pretty much nothing for damage, sometimes even lowers your overall damage(most of the time does) I'm not too sure why but with my testing it seems that unless the new weapon is close to the same damage as the old one (therefore you get a slight dps boost thanks to the 15% IAS) otherwise the dps just goes down. So you sacrifice a sheild and like 40% block for less dps? Worthless dual weilding wands. Gain to loss is not comparable. I'd like to see skills like this one fixed up to work as intended instead of just adding new skills every other patch while ones like this remain in such poor design state.

Edit: I'd also like to add that the cluster of wand nodes at the top of the witch tree is totally unnecessary and dare I say, pretty useless. It's much more beneficial to use those points that you would waste up there and spend them over in the shadow tree to get the elemental/projectile damage and attack speed. Not to mention all the crit over there. I simply don't think it's possible to make a phys wand build with power siphon nearly as powerful as elemental. Since Power Siphon is a physical attack, this is broken.

Hey Mark, is it possible to get two power-charges from an LMP'ed Power Siphon, if I kill two creatures in that hit. Is this part of the skill design?

Just want to give a progress update on another dual-wand Shadow. It's a niche-build right now, and the right modes are much more difficult to get than other weapons. And I need two such wands...

It seems that Power Siphon isn't meant to be a spam skill, but wand users lack a low-mana alternative such as burning arrow to link their support to. Also, I agree with others that the physical damage on wands are really weak and that affects the overall utility of power siphon. You have to sacrifice many more defensive nodes to get to parity with, say, phys bows.

This skill isn't up to the task of being the physical-alternative of elemental hit. Although if we buff physical damage on wands too much, is that crit-builds become OP. Would it be possible instead to increase the damage of low-as wands to compensative for the skill distribution? The meta-game right now would probably favour a staff leap-slam shadow over a dual wand shadow. :P :P

Alternatively, we could introduce an aura or support that synergises better with physical-based wand users so that we don't have to go with Wrath, or Anger... (they really push you down the track of fast attack speed elemental hit and away from siphon)

So I'm not sure if this has been addressed, or if it's working as intended, but when linking Power Siphon with a Ranged Attack Totem support there does not seem to be any power charge added to either totem or player. Since totems are not the player, it stands to reason that the player would not receive the charge, but as the tooltip does not specify that the charge will only go to players I was quite disappointed that the totems did not appear to receive this benefit. That said, the R.A. Totems do benefit from the culling strike portion of the skill, which makes the combination less useless, but it would really add a great mechanic to the game to allow these totems to receive the buff from charges.

Anyway, if this is working as intended, I believe that the tooltip should at least be updated to reflect that power siphon only grants charges to players.


- Superfaster

Is Power Siphon considered a spell or an attack skill?

Power Siphon is used for its critical chance purpose, physical portion is very small part of it (the increase is only for physical build to catch up with elemental damage build, at least that's how I viewed it).


That being said, for my build, as long as my power siphon hit one monster, I will leech back all the mana (no mana leech gem and purely from item mods and passives).

Power Siphon gives huge critical chance, low mana cost, has culling strike, and a nice graphic animation.

And Dual wield is totally viable, you just have to find wand that is good (doesn't have to be equal, just need to have good mods with 1.5 attack speed on it). If fact, if you start from shadow tree, you will instantly get 24% ias from the start, with a lot of opportunities to go into critical.

My build, which is now in legacy, can get up to 94.3% critical chance main hand. With some cold damage from equips and wand, I am able to destroy skeleton + necro combo, thanks to the insane boost on critical chance.

If you want to use power siphon as main attack, I suggest only take enough physical nodes that you leech back the mana, rest go into critical/attack speed/elemental damage.
(reason why I use power siphon as main attack is because I am too lazy to alternate clicks)


Many have underestimated the power of critical. When close to critical cap, it not only provides a lot of damage, but also grants status effect, especially freeze and shock.
Power Siphon, being the only attack that gives power charges as you kill, is OP in that regard.

wanted to add to other players that this has a 125% damage modifier, that means added chaos and elemental damage is boosted too, not just physical. ontop of that the quality increases damage period, meaning all damage (phys, chaos, elemental). projectile damage can increase all damage too technically because wand attacks are projectiles. its just the level ups that increase physical to help that part "catch up".

at higher levels the gem is cheaper than some other gems at its level (lv 16 ish). i haven't been able to make a character to properly play around with this gem though. math wise, its kinda fine but i'll never know if i can't get a pure wand, pure crit, or hybrid crit wand witch to a high enough level.