GGG, please, read this feedback regarding the Blood Mage.

Hey GGG,
I hope someone from your studio reads this because it’s about issues with Blood Mage, one of the least popular ascendancies this season. I’d like to share my feedback and discuss its problems.

Even before the release, we warned that Sanguimancy wouldn’t work well. The idea is cool, but in practice, it’s way too strong on maps and a huge downside for bossing. Since atlas progress depends on killing bosses, this talent feels like a self-inflicted nerf, making the class weaker. Sanguimancy forces us to take the next talent for life leech and makes Chaos Inoculation (CI) unusable. Isn’t that too many downsides for a mandatory first talent?

Let’s look at the last patch. Detonate Dead was popular not just because it dealt high damage, but because it didn’t require scaling gem levels. We didn’t have to pay 300+ life per spell cast, so taking Vitality Siphon wasn’t necessary. Now, with Detonate Dead nerfed, Blood Mage has no choice. We always take Sanguimancy, and since we must scale gem levels like other mages, we’re stuck paying 300+ life per cast. This makes two talents mandatory. Then, we need two more — crit damage and crit chance — because the new leech threshold for mobs in PoE2 means leech won’t work efficiently without crits.

In the end, Blood Mage has zero build flexibility. For spells, it’s always these four talents, with the first one being a pure class debuff just to roleplay a mage who trades health for power. Can we get more options?

Regarding Gore Spike:
Before the release, you nerfed this talent to give 1% increased Critical Damage Bonus per 40 Life. Since patch 0.2.0 reduced the number of items we can use to scale Life to at least 4k, wouldn’t it make sense to un-nerf Gore Spike back to its pre-release state, where the bonus was per 20 Life? That said, this point is optional compared to my other concerns, and I can understand if you decide to keep this Ascendancy point as it is.

Agreed and its 1 of the least played class right now, they should change something

Even besides the leech bloodmage needs crit because life remnants spawn on death or crit.
While I think there were some very strong bloodmage crit builds available last season you are right that it is incredibly restrictive.

It also always feels a bit ironic that you cannot really run blood magic with this build as the life cost will be converted from the base mana cost ON TOP of the life cost equal to half the base cost you alreay pay.