[Suggestion] Balancing Blood Magic and Mortal Conviction.

I think most people would agree that Blood Magic (BM) and Mortal Conviction (MC) aren't in a great place and should be redesigned. My guess is that the goal of BM is to help life base melee classes manage their ability costs in a more convenient way and compensate for the lack of mana/mana regen nodes within the strength area. However, as is, BM's penalty of removing mana and thereby the ability to use mana reserving skills in a reasonable way, is to severe for almost any build. GGG seemed to realize this and introduced MC. Unfortunately, even with MC, the life loss is excessive. Ironically, as was pointed out in another threat, in its current form low-life ES build actually benefit the most from MC. I would like to suggest the following for the BM/MC cluster:

Blood Magic
- Skills that cost mana spend an additional 1% of your maximum life.
- The mana cost of skills is reduced by 1% of your maximum life.
- 300% of the amount of Mana reserved is also reserved from Life.

Three small connecting nodes
"5% increased maximum Life, 5% reduced Mana Cost of Skills", which sequentially connects to:

Mortal Conviction
- +100 to maximum Life.
- 50% less maximum Mana and removes all Energy Shield.

Design Philosophy:
For clarity, the third line of BM works as followed: Mugg the marauder has 100 mana and 2000 life. He decides to activate Anger, reserving 60% of his 100 mana, thus 60 mana. This means that Mugg will also reserve 180 life (300% of the 60 mana). This % value is up for debate.
This BM promotes focusing on high life while keeping mana low is easier to managed and even partially advantageous, as % based mana reservations will lead to less Life reserved. Now mana reservations are still limited by the mana pool and balanced by a reasonable life cost.
Niche low-life builds could still benefit from this version of BM, which is a good thing.

MC now really benefits Life builds. The life bonus benefits builds who stack "+% increased maximum Life" the most. The second line has and interesting feedback to BM, as the 50% less mana would reduce the amount(#) of mana reserved by % reservations and thus the amount of life reserved.

What do you guys think?


Edit: Clarification

Your spellcasting would (still) be crippled if you use anything with high link multipliers. And if you reserve significant mana it could be crippled anyway, up until the point where your life is high enough to remove cost entirely anyway.

Worse is how this interacts with life regeneration and attack speed or cast speed. Getting APS will cripple your build early, lack of mana will cripple your build early. It's hilarious.

Let's say you're using a 4L attack. You'll probably be using Multistrike, Melee Splash, and Melee Phys. That's a minimum mana cost of 32 per attack. At 3200 life that becomes free, up until that point however you still need available mana. If you take that up to 6L (because you're one of those guys) you'll have a mana multiplier somewhere around 8 or 10 times depending on your preferred links, which is somewhere north of 60 mana per attack, requiring 6k (or 5.1k) life to reduce to 0. Of course you'll also be eating up 1% life per attack as well. The thing about the current implementation is that a low cost attack is basically free, and a high cost attack is easy enough to maintain. When you change from flat costs to 1% life per use you go form being able to easily maintain cheap attacks to requiring the same level of investment to maintain the use of your cheap 4L attack as you do your 6L. And it will scales 1:1 with attack speed, meaning you'll need a different amount of regeneration than you currently do (more or less is beyond my interest at the moment).

So if you want to reserve mana in the early game you're going to avoid BM like the plague after this. Let's say you reserve a 60% aura, have 4k HP and 300 mana. You're going to be reserving 960 life. Even if you have reduction sources you're probably not going to have that below 300 life. So you're still reserving the same kind of life values you are with the current MC.



As a note: Using a single Aura for BM is not as crippling as people seem to think it is, given that you can offset the use cost of the aura in some ways. For instance using any single resistance aura is on average worth far more eHP than it takes to maintain. The problem with using auras with BM is more because the game expects you to have 3 or more auras running in endgame content, which obviously does start to become crippling.

Lets talk numbers

Blood Magic + Mortal Conviction is taken. Total Hp 4500, total life regen 2.5%, 75 lvl marauder and lets assume he has no +mana and only + 15 intelligence on gear, his mana will be (after mortal conviction) 180mana.


He wants to use 15lvl vitality with 15lvl reduced mana (no other aura reserve reduction nodes).

40% * 0.76= 30.4% * 0.5 = 15.2% mana reserved. From 180 mana pool thats 27.36, after the MC x3multiplier that becomes = 82,08 life reserved

Now his life regen is 2.5 + 1.4 = 3.9%

He then decides to use 15lvl determination too linked to the same reduced mana gem.


60% * 0.76 = 45.6 * 0.5 = 22.8%, from the same 180 mana pool thats 41,04, MC x3 multiplier = 123,12 hp reserved

Lastly he wants to use 1 lvl of herald of Ash( lets say he gets +15intelligence to use it), wit the same 15lvl reduced mana

25% * 0.76% = 19% * 0.5= 9.5% mana reserved from the 180 pool is 17,10 x3 = 51,3 hp also reserved.

Thats a total of 82,08 + 123,12 + 51,3 hp reserved = 256,5hp reserved for 2 auras + HoA, making his unreserved life to be 4243


Now lets say he uses 15lvl groundslam(11mana base mana cost) in a 6l item with multistrike (180%) + melee physical(140%) + added fire(120%) + faster attacks(115%) + life leech (130%) (for the calculations i wont take into account any reduced cost nodes that he already has), the total mana cost of this 6l ground slam will be around 50mana per use,i wont even reduce this by the 1%of max life that BM now is supposed to reduce skills, but i will add the extra cost per use, tha is again 1% of max life thats 45extra life.

So a use of this 6l groundslam will cost 50+45=95 life per use. His regen is 4.500 * 3.9% = 175.5life regen per second. Adding also the life leech into account you can sustain your life pool indefinately (vaal pact too).

All these calculations where also made without reduced mana costs from the tree while the same time taking all the extra mana multipliers into consideration.

Conclusion

Personally i really liked the idea, very well done and actually now serves the original BM's purpose, to help builds with mana issues. Also in the same time Mortal Conviction is a big no for low life builds and balances/fixes them out too (nerf is not the right word for something that is broken), they can still take BM but MC is out of the question.

There are two problems i see with this though:

1) The fact that the two passives (BM + MC) will become disturbingly overpowered (but GGG can balance the numbers at least, since they cant balance the passive nodes)
2) The existance of Voll's Protector unique item, will make aura costs way too minimal, and in combination with mana reserve reduction nodes, then we will see 50life cost auras (a lot of them too). This is also easily countered though.



I really suggest everyone to take a look at this, and especially GGG personnel

P.S. : If i made mistakes in my calculations plz tell cause im not 100% sure about them

Thanks for taking to time to go into this and the numbers (I just did some rough estimates from the top of my head when working on this). I'm not sure if your calculations are correct though, I think you applied the 50% modifier from MC twice (made it Bold in the quote). Or I'm missing something. Is it a calculation with Voll Protector in mind?

"

Blood Magic + Mortal Conviction is taken. Total Hp 4500, total life regen 2.5%, 75 lvl marauder and lets assume he has no +mana and only + 15 intelligence on gear, his mana will be (after mortal conviction) 180mana.

He wants to use 15lvl vitality with 15lvl reduced mana (no other aura reserve reduction nodes).

40% * 0.76= 30.4% * 0.5 = 15.2% mana reserved. From 180 mana pool thats 27.36, after the MC x3multiplier that becomes = 82,08 life reserved

40% * 0.76 (RM Gem) = 30.4% of your 180 mana will be reserved, which equals 55 out of 180 mana.
55 x 3 = 165 Life reserved as well.

For the other reservations: Determination (60% * 0.76 = 45.6% from 180 equals 82 life. Times 3 = 246), Same for Herald of Fire would result in 103 Life (25% * 0.76 * 180 * 3).

The total reservation would be:
Life 165 + 246 + 103 = 513 Life reserved out of the 4500
Mana 30.5% + 45.6% + 19% = 95% or 171 Mana reserved out of the 180.

Which is still quite steep, maybe a modifier of 250% (427 Life reserved) instead of 300% would be better.

"

Now lets say he uses 15lvl groundslam(11mana base mana cost) in a 6l item with multistrike (180%) + melee physical(140%) + added fire(120%) + faster attacks(115%) + life leech (130%) (for the calculations i wont take into account any reduced cost nodes that he already has), the total mana cost of this 6l ground slam will be around 50mana per use,i wont even reduce this by the 1%of max life that BM now is supposed to reduce skills, but i will add the extra cost per use, tha is again 1% of max life thats 45extra life.

So a use of this 6l groundslam will cost 50+45=95 life per use.

I think there was a miss understanding somewhere in how I meant it to work. Let me elaborate:
The rounded cost of your example is indeed 50 mana per slam. Now with the three 5% reduced mana nodes it would cost ~43 Mana per attack and 1% of your maximum life (thus 45 Life). However, the actual mana cost would receive a flat reduction by 1% of your maximum Life: 43 Mana - 45 = -2 Mana thus 0 Mana. So, the 6-linked Ground Slam would cost an effective 45 Life per attack, and no mana.

Now if we would have an attack that would cost 100 Mana it would look like: 100 - 15% (3 nodes) = 85 Mana, now the flat 1% Life reduction comes in: 85 - 45 = 40. This attack would cost an effective 45 Life and 40 Mana per use.

This makes MC attractive for skills with relative low base cost. However, casters might go for BM but leave MC alone so that they can maintain a decent amount of mana regen. This is intensional.

Anyhow, the current numbers are all up for discussion and balancing.

Yes, Voll's Protector might be an issue. Instead of Less Mana MC could say: 50% less Mana, other maximum Mana modifiers have no effect.

"

Autocthon wrote:

Your spellcasting would (still) be crippled if you use anything with high link multipliers. And if you reserve significant mana it could be crippled anyway, up until the point where your life is high enough to remove cost entirely anyway.

As a life based spell caster you might want to take BM, but stay away from MC. This way your mana cost is reduced significantly by BM, but you retain a fair amount of Mana and Mana Regen through retaining a mana pool. But yes, for very intensive spellcasting it might not be ideal, not that I think this a problem per se. Especially when you take into account the location of the Keystone in the passive tree.

"

Worse is how this interacts with life regeneration and attack speed or cast speed. Getting APS will cripple your build early, lack of mana will cripple your build early. It's hilarious.

This I don't follow. Your statement holds true for BM in its current ingame iteration as well, or for any ability cost in that matter. When you increase the uses per second you spend more mana or life. The only difference is that now its based on your max life, instead of a flat number. This can either be an advantage or disadvantage, depending on a characters HP combined with the costs of the abilities used.
Compare the 1% to your own example (only 4 link): 32 mana per attack. Normally this would have cost 32 Life per attack. With 4000-4500 Life this BM would cost 40-45, which wont be really noticeable compared to 32. Don't forget that you still have regenaration and both life and mana leech. The % reduced mana cost nodes are also significant when combined with a flat reduction, especially with more expensive spells.

"

So if you want to reserve mana in the early game you're going to avoid BM like the plague after this. Let's say you reserve a 60% aura, have 4k HP and 300 mana. You're going to be reserving 960 life. Even if you have reduction sources you're probably not going to have that below 300 life. So you're still reserving the same kind of life values you are with the current MC.

Thats not correct, you would reserve 540 life (300 * 0.6 = 180, times 3 = 540). This is without MC and a RM gem (which would reduce this to 205 life reserved). You state that early game this would be an issue, but your example doesn't describe early game (4K life, 300 mana is at least lvl 65). At 65, with those stats, it would really be best to take MC. I don't think the issue holds true for lower levels either. The life reserved scales with level as you mana pool scales with level.

About the mana reserve costs, yes my bad i though that MC still reduced mana reserved by 50% less :P. If thats not the case then the numbers are pretty good, 500life for 2auras + 1 buff is very good (take into consideration that this is only with reduced mana gem, you can also spec into mana reservation reduction nodes and reduce the life reserved even more, and 4500life is nothing to reach with marauders and duelists 6k is ez pz, so number-wise the x3 is very good), and since MC counters LL builds then its more than good. Another awesome fact is that if you go full life and life regen then skills like dominating blow/cyclone can be used without problem with your life

Anyway thax for the clarifications, so you still have mana right? I though the original mana pool was only relative for the calculations but in fact you are supposed to have 0/0 as it is now, but thats not the case as it seems.

I fully support this suggestion, is by far the best ive seen about the whole BM + MC situation

I tried some math with this and my ex-beyond EA marauder.

To sum up: your change gets BM in the middle of nowhere, at least in my case.

I used a 5L EA with BM gem, total cost 183/attack and more than 3aps. With the gem i was totally fine. With your BM keystone i would spend 50life/attack and still 43mana/attack. It means i have too invest in mana to or i can't sustain it. What's the point of going BM then?

It seems to me you're just trying to screw low life builds. Why mess with energy shield because you're spending life instead of mana?

BM keystone imho should get some benefit from the lost mana, that's it. Like: base mana becomes final life (which is 400hp @ level 100)

Low life shavs still OP? deal with it...you still need a shavs to make it.

edit:
don't get me wrong: the reasoning and the effort are very positive. Still the numbers don't add up in my opinion.