Ways to Fix Sanguimancy, so it won't feel troll level 30-60

TLDR - Sanguimancy is a troll skill at level 30, it needs to be fixed to not do more damage to you than a boss in a boss fight. This doesn't really stop at the 2nd trial, because one is almost forced into taking Vitality Siphon and using a direct-casting (not minion build). This is eliminating choice for the player, which is objectively bad. One way to fix all this is to make Sanguimancy's life cost only apply to "overcharge" health *above* max health, but I list some other options below.

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I think blood mage is in a decent state late game, when we can scale up and finish a full build. However, around level 30, when we can get Sanguimancy and only Sanguimancy, the ascendancy node feels horrible on boss fights.

WITH Sanguimancy, I BARELY downed end of Act 2 Jamara with 1% health remaning and zero flask charges after two attemtps. (level 33)

WITHOUT Sanguimancy (just unspeccing it, everything else the same), I EASILY downed end of Act 2 Jamara with 100% health and 2-3 uses left on my flask, on the first attempt. (level 34)

This is not at all surprising, as my SRS/Arsonist/FlameWall build is barely every spawning Life Remnants on a boss. But even if it were, the internal 2s Life Remnant cooldown (94 life per 2 seconds) is too low to generate enough life to pay for 2 seconds of much more than free default attacks.

An Ascendancy node should NOT feel this troll.

To be fair, Sanguimancy feels okay clearing trash in the campaign, because we typically get enough life remnants from copious kills to stay above max-health, even including spell costs. When we don't, using flasks is practical because we are constantly getting flask charges from kills.

This begs the question, how can Samguimancy be fixed to feel better on bosses during the campaign and before we get a more complete build online, without being overpowered?

Here are some of my very best ideas, with the simplest one headlining this post:

1. Make Sanguimancy's health cost only apply to overcharge health above max-health. (aka "When above max health, skills gain a base life cost equal to mana cost.", or "Skills gain a life-drain to overcharge health equal to base mana cost") This effectively "turns off" Sanguimancy on boss fights when you can't generate enough life remnants to overcharge. It's still weird that this effectively makes the first ascendancy not useful in boss fights, but at least it wouldn't kill us.


2. Change Life Remnants spawn criteria to be more like shock, an RNG against Ailment Threshold, making it spawn more against bosses because of their comparatively lower ailment threshold precentage. Something like, "For every 50% of an enemy's ailment threshold done in damage from all sources, there is a (10%) chance to spawn a life remnant. This chance is (tripled) on rare or unique enemies.". The numbers would need to be tuned to generate a similar number of Life Remnants fighting trash, while massively more fighting bosses from levels 30-60 in the campaign. This solution does lean more into the life-remnant pickup identity of the blood mage.

3. Do both #1 and #2.

4. Merge "Vitality Siphon" into Sanguimancy, so we never have to take Sanguimancy without *some* leech, as a lower but more flexible "5% of spell damage done leeched as life" (which won't help melee or minion builds) or "5% of skill and minion damage done leeched as life" (which feels overpowered)

5. Make Sanguimancy a pre-requsite for "Vitality Siphon" but not for the entire rest of the blood mage tree.

P.S. If anyone who has any influence over Blood Mage design reads this post, also consider if it's practical to make Vitality Siphon be "Skill damage" instead of "Spell Damage" and Sunder the flesh be "Base Skill Critical Hit Chance" instead of Spell critical hit chance, as Blood Mage would make a more interesting melee ascendancy if these were usable by melee. Though it might be that this was considered, and intentionally made to be the way it is.

Just one tip for countering bosses in the early levels is using Bone Storm. Bone skills all have inherently high base crit chance of 15%, and Bone Storm fires multiple projectiles, so getting a crit hit every 2 seconds is quite consistent. But I do agree that the 2 second cooldown is harsh. Another issue is that it does force us to use one skill or one type of skill when choosing blood mage - so it does kill any build diversity.

Also it would be nice if the pick-up radius of the life remnants be a tad wider. Like picking up grim feast seems to have a wider radius, but the life remnants, we have to be much closer to pick it up. so against bosses, we're always on a lookout when a remnant drops, so in addition to fighting or dodging the boss, we need to play pick-up.

++ to OP post.

I do have bone storm in my spec and I do use it. I hardly ever generate remnants on a boss. Perhaps one would have to have a non-minion bonestorm build for this to come close.

I think it would be hard to reliably generate a life remnant every 2 seconds with any build at level 30, and still stay within the 94 life per 2 second budget this would afford you.... unless we relied heavily on "free" skills, such as wand spam or default attack melee spam.

I've been considering trying a Bloodmage based on the unique quarterstaff "Pillar of the Caged God", which would probably decent uptime Life Remnants in boss fights, and could use lots of "free" quarterstaff attacks, but this is obviously not the general case solution for Sanguimancy.

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The reality is that the Sanguimancy node is the thing killing us, not the boss, and just unspeccing it makes the class stronger in boss fights.

This seems (possibly) broken / bad, and certainly feels bad.

I want to add the one caveat that GGG is notorious for giving players lots of tools with tradeoffs... so it might be entirely intentional that they made blood mage Sanguimancy be "bad" early. This gives some players reasons to hate, while players who "invest" and get past this early phase can ultimately unlock the power of the ascendancy later.

Still feels weird to spend 2.5 acts playing Ascended but not spending ascendancy points. (or conditionally unspeccing them for boss fights)