blood mage feels terrible, possible low investment "fix"

- enable life stacking with unique / ascendancy node (replace crimson power or grasping wounds), mana conversion (convert all mana and mana costs to life and life costs) or ES conversion (convert energy shield to life) would work well id imagine

- buff sanguimancy hard. like really really really hard. 4x the heal, or 4x the remnant drop rate, or 2x both. i was getting aids trying to make a life build work on the life ascendancy before i stopped playing because the life ascendancy benefits fuckall for using life

i wrote an essay (lmao) about my thoughts on blood mage after 400 hours, should any GGGers be interested in it shoot me a dm

I already wrote this in a similar bloodmage thread.
This ascendancy needs a lot of fixing, but here are 2 main issues:
1. Life Remnants forces all bloodmages to play crit.
2. Sanguimancy should be free! (grant 2 more ascendancy points)

i feel like there are a couple problems with those fixes. first, i think crit is what you sign up for when you choose blood mage, in the same way that you sign up for mana as stormweaver, and poison as pathfinder. when executed properly i think this is a good thing.

second, sanguimancy is a net negative through the campaign, if you get unlucky with gear drops its very possible you cant kill bosses before running out of flask charges. also, it breaks a rule that every other ascendancy follows. i think it would be a little odd to only have one ascendancy to have a "passive".

i think your free sanguimancy idea is a symptom of the ascendancy just being pretty bad, and while i think it would be a bit out of place in current poe2 i think if other ascendancies had passives it would be a promising idea. similarly, i think your crit idea is a symptom of crit being pretty mid right now. the 15% base crit spells (bonestorm, unearth, bone cage) are all pretty bad, and you cant scale crit nearly as hard as mana or attributes or spirit.