Spell Leech

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FathomWheel a écrit :

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golan4840 a écrit :

-going for certain ascendancy classes for leech is less than ideal.
-getting a warlords mark curse requires a fair amount of investement and is not always reliable.
-lab enchant for boots is very unreliable.

So yea, compared to attack builds that can pop a single point on the tree and be ok, getting leech for spells is not easy.
Again, as it should be, since spells never miss.

Whether it is ideal or not is beside the point. Leech for spells is readily available for both mana and life. But to address your points:

1) Warlord's Mark requires 1 or 2 gem slots. Either Warlord's Mark + Blasphemy, Warlord's Mark by itself, or an Elder ring with Warlord's Mark. It goes from barely any investment to about 3-8ex worth of investment.

2) I don't know what you mean by unreliable, but in any way you could mean, you would be wrong. Do you mean unreliable in that you can only leech if you've killed recently (last 4 seconds IIRC)? If so, it is very reliable because most builds go much fewer than 4 seconds between groups of monsters and it's only the first monster you can't leech from.

Whether it's ideal or not is very much part of the point. The ascendancy that offers you leech is not ideal for spell casters, so it's a sacrifice you have to make if you want to get leech. Try making one of those and tell me how it went for you.

Investment = the sacrifices you need to make in order to get the curse. You sacrifice 35% of your mana. You sacrifice a curse slot that could be used for something much better for your build.

Unreliable = you can't rely on the leech to be up 100% of the time. if you enter a hexproof map you can't leech with warlords mark. If you want to fight most bosses in the game, boots enchant will not work for you.

What are you trying to argue here? Are you trying to make the point that getting leech for spells is as easy as getting it for attacks? If not, this argument is pointless.

Yeah, the parts of the game that are most crucial to balance around often don't have adds: we're talking Shaper/Uber Elder, Uber Atziri, etc.

The truth is, years ago, even ATTACK leech wasn't readily accessible. IIRC the only nodes that were available then was Lust for Carnage, which was restricted to PHYSICAL damage. It was never really tweaked much through the years, so you might notice how much it currently sucks.

I remember when Essence Sap was added, and it made building mana management so much easier for my TS ranger; (this pre-dated ascendancies) I no longer had to try to path for and rely on Revelry and Mana Flows. (as Revelry alone wasn't always enough)

Then we got Vitality & Spirit Void in 2.0; that was a HUGE bit of power creep. Suddenly all attackers, even those using elemental damage, had access to all the leech they ever needed right on the passive tree.

Once upon a time, the game was balanced around the assumption that you'd have to use a gem socket or two for a Life Leech gem. (also, GMP was a -50% penalty to your damage...) The shift to eliminate a need for these has been responsible for a lot of DPS power creep...

Creep that has largely left self-casters behind. Looking over at Delve's POEN, we see that we have only 4 of 22 of the (non-Vaal) skills with at least 1% usage are spell-damage based, compared to 12 attack damage, 3 minion damage, and 3 damage over time.

And of those four, arc is primarily traps or totems, and glacial cascade is almost exclusively mines. Scorching Ray is just paired with RF (which is a DoT skill, not spell damage) which leaves us with... Blade Vortex, which is self-cast, but also pre-cast. (And dovetails conveniently with a Warlord's Mark Blasphemy Aura, which 27% of BV users go for)

The truth is... Build diversity has improved a decent bit with attack-based builds, but is doing pretty terrible for self-cast spell damage builds, and the lack of easy access to leech is definitely a major factor. Do remember that most of these "possible solutions" being proposed to claim it's "not bad at all" are also available to attack builds.

Self-cast builds need some major buffs; I don’t see why a little bit of leech couldn’t be part of that.

Also to folks saying casters are supposed to have inferior defenses, that concept is thrown out the window with totems, traps, mines, poet’s pen, and newly buffed CoC. Only classic self-casters are penalized.

Off-topic: this game could use a “spell damage support” gem that only works with self-cast spells. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

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demon9675 a écrit :

Self-cast builds need some major buffs; I don’t see why a little bit of leech couldn’t be part of that.

Also to folks saying casters are supposed to have inferior defenses, that concept is thrown out the window with totems, traps, mines, poet’s pen, and newly buffed CoC. Only classic self-casters are penalized.

Off-topic: this game could use a “spell damage support” gem that only works with self-cast spells. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

From all things that you listed, the only one that really could be counted as "defense" are totems. Traps and mines can't be targeted, so there's nothing in traps, mines, poet's pen or CoC that actually prevents you to be the only objective for all mobs. Traps at least cast their spell from their position, it can be considered an advantage, but not a defensive layer. Mines can't be thrown, so even if they cast the spell, you have to be there to set the mine in first place. Poet's and CoC cast their spells from your position, so they do absolutely nothing for your defense.

The problem with non self-cast builds is not the defense advantage. It's the state of power creep of the game: traps and mines are supposed to give you the positioning advantage at the cost of dps (Spell totem and Trap support gems for reference). But the damage output is so absurdly high that they can trivialize the damage loss and still gain damage if multiple totems are cast at once. As for poet's pen, CoC, and such, they don't even have that damage loss, GGG on purpose created a mechanic that allows casters to cast their spells way faster than if they go self-cast... and with no downsides. In short words: the imbalance is offensive, not so defensive actually.

Spell leech won't help in your cause, not even talk about resolving it. There should be a core mechanic that automatically lessen the damage of all spells when triggered, regardless of the source of the trigger. Or increase it when not triggered, I don't care. But it shouldn't be a gem, or a passive, or anything, it should be a core mechanic.

Side note: I only have 5 chars atm. Trapper, Soulwrest, Cospri, Poet and Mjölner. I think I know enough about non self-cast to give my opinion xD

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Lykkoith a écrit :

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demon9675 a écrit :

Self-cast builds need some major buffs; I don’t see why a little bit of leech couldn’t be part of that.

Also to folks saying casters are supposed to have inferior defenses, that concept is thrown out the window with totems, traps, mines, poet’s pen, and newly buffed CoC. Only classic self-casters are penalized.

Off-topic: this game could use a “spell damage support” gem that only works with self-cast spells. Seems like a no-brainer to me.

From all things that you listed, the only one that really could be counted as "defense" are totems. Traps and mines can't be targeted, so there's nothing in traps, mines, poet's pen or CoC that actually prevents you to be the only objective for all mobs. Traps at least cast their spell from their position, it can be considered an advantage, but not a defensive layer. Mines can't be thrown, so even if they cast the spell, you have to be there to set the mine in first place. Poet's and CoC cast their spells from your position, so they do absolutely nothing for your defense.

The problem with non self-cast builds is not the defense advantage. It's the state of power creep of the game: traps and mines are supposed to give you the positioning advantage at the cost of dps (Spell totem and Trap support gems for reference). But the damage output is so absurdly high that they can trivialize the damage loss and still gain damage if multiple totems are cast at once. As for poet's pen, CoC, and such, they don't even have that damage loss, GGG on purpose created a mechanic that allows casters to cast their spells way faster than if they go self-cast... and with no downsides. In short words: the imbalance is offensive, not so defensive actually.

Spell leech won't help in your cause, not even talk about resolving it. There should be a core mechanic that automatically lessen the damage of all spells when triggered, regardless of the source of the trigger. Or increase it when not triggered, I don't care. But it shouldn't be a gem, or a passive, or anything, it should be a core mechanic.

Side note: I only have 5 chars atm. Trapper, Soulwrest, Cospri, Poet and Mjölner. I think I know enough about non self-cast to give my opinion xD

You’re correct, but I should have clarified that offense is a great layer of defense. The trigger mechanics I mentioned have made casters so offensively powerful that the supposed defense drawback is only a thing if you’re not doing enough damage, e.g. self-casting.

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Lykkoith a écrit :

From all things that you listed, the only one that really could be counted as "defense" are totems. Traps and mines can't be targeted, so there's nothing in traps, mines, poet's pen or CoC that actually prevents you to be the only objective for all mobs.

- You don't get Corrupted blood stack with traps
- You are immune to reflect with traps ( which makes a BIG different for the uber trio and (Uber) Atziri for example )
- Traps can be pre-loaded ( big difference for boss, and if you instantly kill a boss = this is the safest way you could play the encounter, ever )

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demon9675 a écrit :

You’re correct, but I should have clarified that offense is a great layer of defense. The trigger mechanics I mentioned have made casters so offensively powerful that the supposed defense drawback is only a thing if you’re not doing enough damage, e.g. self-casting.

However, of course, the fact is that ranged and trap/totem builds have even better defensive abilities by being able to readily offscreen content; few spells offer the same sort of ability to just safely keep that level of distance. There are SOME projectiles, but they tend to be slower than using a bow or wand and more likely to miss. Some spells can be arbitrarily thrown at the edge of the screen, but tend to have delays/rely on gradual damage (storm call, bladefall, cold snap) or with flameblast, where you have to be a sitting duck while you channel.

And then, of course, there's the myriad of shorter-range spells. Incinerate's fun, but definitely every bit as risky as melee... Really moreso since melee has access to easy leech. (a Ngamahu's Sign doesn't QUITE cute it the same, I've found... But it or something better are definitely mandatory)

As if spells like BV arent OP already, let's give LL nodes to them...

If you want leech from spells - use Life Leech support. What's the problem?
You want power at no cost?

Use Life Leech support gem.

"But mah deeps will go d--"

Yes.

"That's just utter b--"

..by design. Yes.

Most arguments shown here actually rely on the same fact: that their offensive capabilities are their best way of defense. So in the end, you're agreeing that their problem is their offensive power. As said before, they give the positioning advantage. This includes not being you who take the reflected damage and, obviously, the chance of positioning before the fight starts. Nothing wrong with it, it was supposed to be its identity feat. The problem is that this identity feat is powerful enough to deserve considerable downsides... and their actual downsides are negligible.

In this sense of identity feats, I think some supports were a bad choice. Talking mainly about spell/ranged attack totem, trap support, mine, and even mirage archer (that totally deleted ranged attack totem from the game). Indeed they added a wide variety to the build ecosystem short-term. Build they've also erased the identity of true totem skills, as well as many true traps and almost every true mine (say, all skills originally designed as totems, traps or mines without the addition of those supports). In the long run, it looks like there's no sense to play self-cast, but there's no sense to release new totems/traps/mines either. In the long run, it's having a deep and negative impact in both diversity and identity. No shame on GGG, all those support ideas were so tempting at first look, they just lacked foresight.

But it's too late to remove them now and it'd b a terrible idea, so I guess we'll need some offensive rebalance, as well as a series of new spells on purposely designed to be non-triggerable or sub-optimal when triggered (because such skills would be preemptively protected against identity loss if new sources of trigger are released). I'm already working on three skill suggestions in this sense, I'll post them later when they're more refined.