Blood Mage Dominance, Ascendancy Power, and Lich

With Blood Mage's Sanguimancy ascendancy node being mandatory in recent patches, it's no wonder that it's the most played, strongest, and dominant ascendancy the game currently offers.

It provides upsides and downsides; skills gain life costs, but you get to restore that health back by actively hitting enemies and collecting life remnants, thus encouraging active, risk-and-reward gameplay.

This kind of power is thematically fitting for a Blood Mage while being transformative to how a character plays. All other ascendancies don't get such transformative skills or bonuses. Not off the bat or without significant investment, at least.

Instead of nerfing Blood Mage, I'd encourage GGG to look into giving all other ascendancies required skills or nodes (with upsides and downsides in PoE 2 balancing fashion) that are transformative and thematically fitting for that particular ascendancy.

While we're on the topic of ascendancies, I'm a huge Lich enjoyer. I think the cookie-cutter build that GGG pushes right at the very beginning of the game utilizing both Chaos spells (EDC) and minions is heavily underrated and under-played. Why that is, I couldn't say.

However, as it stands, I believe Lich is rather boring and limited. Necromantic Conduit is a great damage boost node for minions and Liches alike, but the (boring) passive 5% mana drain is too oppressive if you want to invest into MoM, Eldritch Battery, and/or mana stacking. Instead of passively draining a % of mana, how about increasing mana costs by a certain % up to a cap based on nearby allies? Thus, you aren't severely cucking MoM setups with its 50% less mana recovery rate downside.

There is nothing you can do to scale defensively while being a mana stacking Lich. (I understand that stacking hella mana regeneration is a form of defensive scaling, but this is essentially negated by Necromantic Conduit + MoM.) Which, fair enough, would be problematic given how much power Blackened Heart and Arcane Intensity would give you with this setup.

The only defensive option is Soulless Form and Eternal Life. But I'm a Lich; I don't exactly care about life. I want to care about ES and mana. I would gladly trade the power that mana stacking + Arcane Intensity + Blackened Heart gives in exchange for defensive scaling with mana besides MoM + mana regeneration.

Hope both BM and Lich sees nerfs

Blood Mage is definitely, in its current form, one of, if not the best designed ascendancy. Agreed with everything you mention. It transforms gameplay. It provides tremendous benefits. It feels fitting Blood theme. More ascendancies should be like Blood Mage.

While nerfs are certainly possible I hope GGG will instead opt to rework / buff other ascendancies, not just by the numbers, but by how they could transform gameplay and provide thematically fitting benefits.

I still remember that feeling when I rolled the improved Blood Mage for the first time, and as soon as I finished Trial of Sekhemas the entire gameplay feel totally changed. I felt much more powerful and had to immediately start playing around blood remnants as to stay alive. This feeling is missing from 90% of other Ascendancies.

+1

Blood Mage is only powerful in Trade:

https://poe.ninja/poe2/builds

Without trade the ascendancy does not provide enough defense compared to others.

1) games balanced around trade
2) bm has defense regardless of trade or not

1) games balanced around trade

I have not seen a single dev confirmation of this. If you know of one please link.

2) bm has defense regardless of trade or not

The evidence on POE ninja does not support this.

Neither BM or LICH is op. At best they scale better than other classes. Something you only see if you're rich. In exchange they suck until they get the most powerful gear.

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ThisViolinist#3344 wrote:

... if you want to invest into MoM, Eldritch Battery, and/or mana stacking.

The only defensive option is Soulless Form and Eternal Life. But I'm a Lich; I don't exactly care about life. I want to care about ES and mana.

The entire reason you play lich is because of Eternal Life. It's the most powerful passive in the lich tree. It's one of the most powerful defensive passives in the game. ?!?!?

I don't think it's fair to say Blood mage is OP for MOM. Blood mage is better equipped to use MOM while retaining the ascendancy's power. Using MOM with Lich is an intentional handicap. It would be like deadeye complaining there isn't enough shield wall support in their tree.

TLDR. Don't use MOM with lich, that's crazy. Or if you do use it, don't expect it to optimal.

Note:

Also don't take "chaos inoculation" with "eternal life". Eternal life can't be damaged by bleeds or poisons while you have energy shield.

Souless forms give you a good amount of mana regen if you build for it. Potentially enough to completely offset the cost Necromantic Conduit.

1) well known obvious answer. This is like asking to link a dev saying damaging skills are meant to hurt.


2) Player doesnt seem to know how to read ninja.

Or even what it shows.

Guess 0 BM builds in HCSSF exist with 10k+ ES and over 2k health oh wait.....





The rage bait accounts seem to have a very narrow view on how to make characters.


Not surprising as we are also being told to not take MoM as a lich. But I guess none of these exist either.



Pages and pages of MoM liches..


Its like spells that dont cost mana exist or something.


Ecks Dee. GGez

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Mashgesture#2912 wrote:

1) well known obvious answer. This is like asking to link a dev saying damaging skills are meant to hurt.

If you don't have a source, I'm going to assume you just lied. When you have a source I'll correct my assumption.

"

Mashgesture#2912 wrote:

Guess 0 BM builds in HCSSF exist with 10k+ ES and over 2k health oh wait

You have proven that BM exist on HCSSF. I guess your argument is it's possible to have defense on BM? Obviously it has some defense. That not my argument nor does it refute my argument. I'll assume you just didn't understand my argument. I'll try to make it simple for you to understand.

Of the 1140 HC SSF player level 80+
https://poe.ninja/poe2/builds/vaalhcssf?min-level=80

51 of them are blood mage 210 of those characters are Varashta.

In contrast there are 3078 HC Trade characters level 80+
https://poe.ninja/poe2/builds/vaalhc

333 of them are Blood Mage and 471 are Varashta. The difference between these leagues is trade. This strongly suggest trade has a strong influence on whether players will get blood mage to level 80+

To demonstrate this further:

Of the 6369 SC SSF players level 80+, 455 are blood mage 770 are Varstha

Of the 124,315 SC Trade players level 80+, 21,671 are blood mage, 6429 are Varstha. The most obvious interpretation of all the above numbers, is BM defenses suck and it needs trade to be enjoyable. Despite being the most played class in SC Trade it's numbers in every other league are terrible.

Were you able to follow all that? Here's another attempt:

Number bigger in trade league then self-found league.
Bigger number mean people like more in trade league.