Bloodmage ascendancy has an awful first node and almost breaks the class

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djuq4l#1584 wrote:

The ascendancy is extremely important for feel and power level. Sadly the bloodmage has the worst start.

The bloodmage has some insanely good nodes, however the tree is designed that the first ascendancy is fixed. It's bad for the reason that it effectively robs the bloodmage from an ascendancy level, but also this node is a straight downgrade for the character.

The node is making your spells to have life cost. It does not make your spells to cost life, it makes them cost life and mana!!!!
This means that mana regen is still an issue you need to manage and now you have a permanent degen on you to cast spells!

The only benefit you get is, that health orbs are going to spawn wich can overheal you. This is good for general mapping because killing mobs usually give more orbs than the cost of killing them, but at bossfights it is insanely clunky and unreliable.

So overall the first ascendancy is waisted on a node wich makes spells cost double and cost life and for this hefty sacrifice the benefit is only enough to situationally counteract the loss.

It's a straight downgrade for your character during leveling, which is the last thing an ascendancy should be.

Later on this node is interacting with some other nodes wich will make it better "still not good enough to be chosen if it wasn't forced" but until you reach the second ascendancy its better to not use the points.