Looking for advice into Life leech (bug maybe)

Okay so I'll try to explain my problem as briefly as possible, any help with knowledge or advice would be much appreciated!

Initially once I saw the hiltless sword (reflects damage incase you didn't know) I knew I was all about making a cast on damage taken build. My first build was just a proof of concept; really rough leveling then actually became sustainable, even strong around level 80. I'll explain the key concepts below

This build has about 5.5k life, Mind over matter, fortify on attack as defense and uses CoDT warlords mark for life leech to sustain the damage. I use cyclone to trigger low level CoDT skeleton that feedback into the heartbound loop that causes a chain reaction (much like the build of the week version that came up last year). This build is based of an inquisitor and uses EE for damage triggering all kinds of spells.

Now the only main problem I faced was the health pool was just not enough to make this build endgame viable, I could run up to tier 13 maps but beyond that was very deadly (as much of my damage taken is self inflicted). So I devised an energy shield version that right now (at level 60) has around 6k ES and essentially the same setup; HOWEVER even with ghost reaver (with and without vaal pact) I am unable to leech enough ES to even be noticable. This has turned into somewhat of a disaster where I am unable to figure out why I am lacking the ability to leech.

A friend of mine is running a build that uses warlords mark to leech with a whispering ice (also using ghost reaver) so I know this SHOULD work.

so can anyone help shed some light on this? I doubt this is a bug but I wouldn't discount that.

Please help, and thanks!


tl;dr Why isn't ghost reaver + warlords mark letting my CI character leech life?

Im not 100% convinced energy shield leech is working correctly. When I take Vaal Pact on an es build or use atziri gloves the instant leech is insane, my es pool zooooooooms up. Without it I cant even notice the leech, Ill be at 50% es, wipe out a massive horde of mobs and I cant say for sure my es level even budged a single pixel. Ive complained about this, I keep bringing it up, no one really seems to be listening though sadly.

I stack over 2% life leech on ci builds, put on a 460pdps mirrored platinum dagger and smash down mobs with 6 figure dps and I cant even be sure any leech is occurring at all, its that fucked. I had to go out and buy a 400pdps claw in order to stack over 4% life leech along with taking vaal pact just to notice leech doing anything on a trickester build I made last league. 2% leech now is the equiv of what? 10% leech before the changes? They said leech was buffed against packs, I never stacked 10% leech before the changes and leech was extremely noticable with less than half of that instant or not, now I have to double it and get vaal pact to even visually see that it does something to my es pool. Is leech rate making that much of a difference? Something feels distinctly wrong, with certain setups leech to energy shield doesnt seem to do anything at all and I never have this problem with a life build, its always noticeable on life even with 1.2% leech type figures.

Maybe its just me and its working fine, Im looking at it wrong or whatever, but Ive played an awful lot of builds over the last 3 years and leech to energy shield does not seem to be working as i expect it to after the leech changes. Looking at rate based leech to life, instant leech to life, instant leech to es when it comes to rate based leech to es it suddenly behaves completely unexpectedly. Instant leech to life just fills your pool up, without instant it takes time but you do the same sort of damage with the same sort of leech % and it will still fill your globe up, you have instant es it instantly fills your es then take of instant and suddenly, if its working at all, at best its given you back about a millimeter of es and then tapped out, I get that its going to be slower than instant but wheres the other 98% of the es I am supposed to be getting back? Are we sure this isnt bugged?


On a side note ull want a lot more than 6k es, functionally that is going to feel like playing a 3.5k life character, you want 10k+.

Not sure how the reflected damage from Hiltless works. But could it be that your life variant had some armor/physical damage reduction while your ES doesn't? Might just be that you're leeching the same, but also taking more damage per hit than you were so overall it seems like a loss?

Thanks fdor the feedback Snorkle, it seems to be the case with me aswell. My friend with a simmilar CI build is working just fine with WL mark and mine well... isn't

Namcap; my life variant is using all ES gear with no ES rolls on it to try and avoid taking less damage, its interesting that you also considered that; I should have mentioned that is had no armor, just fortify (though both my builds use fortify).

Well I think I can conclude yep; it is a bug :(

Thanks everyone

ES leech is working as expected for me. With Warlord's Mark and no Vaal Pact, I get a decent amount of ES regain vs enemies. With Vaal pact + life leech gem, the regain can be really low or high depending on the damage I do.

Note that leech depends on the number of leech instances. Whispering Ice will very easily bring you to your leech cap since it does a lot of hits. Whereas if you are doing fewer hits at a time, you might not see as much benefit from leech. The default maximum recovery rate is 2% of your life/es per second for each hit, up to 20% if you combine them together. So with default leech, unless you're doing 10 hits at a time you won't reach that 20% cap.

Without Vaal pact, I see significantly better leeching using firestorm (4L, curse on hit + 2 curses) than with my 5L Flameblast, for eg.

With Vaal Pact, you can't increase the recovery rate at all (except with Beast fur shawl), so it basically just depends on your leech % and dps. So you won't leech very much with 2% at level 60!

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dudiobugtron wrote:

ES leech is working as expected for me. With Warlord's Mark and no Vaal Pact, I get a decent amount of ES regain vs enemies. With Vaal pact + life leech gem, the regain can be really low or high depending on the damage I do.

Note that leech depends on the number of leech instances. Whispering Ice will very easily bring you to your leech cap since it does a lot of hits. Whereas if you are doing fewer hits at a time, you might not see as much benefit from leech. The default maximum recovery rate is 2% of your life/es per second for each hit, up to 20% if you combine them together. So with default leech, unless you're doing 10 hits at a time you won't reach that 20% cap.

Without Vaal pact, I see significantly better leeching using firestorm (4L, curse on hit + 2 curses) than with my 5L Flameblast, for eg.

With Vaal Pact, you can't increase the recovery rate at all (except with Beast fur shawl), so it basically just depends on your leech % and dps. So you won't leech very much with 2% at level 60!

The thing is I am hitting dozens of times per second, and even though I am doing damage to myself I am gaining an unnoticeable amount of ES back (if any) against single or multiple targets. I will be using crown of eyes + more melee phys on my attack giving me about 9k dps along with a leech gem and still no ES is coming back, I've tried unallocating and reallocating ghost reaver to make sure it wasn't that which was bugged.

I have a friend that is using whispering ice and his build DOES leech just fine, when he loaned me his staff to try I couldn't leech. Is there something specific that I am overlooking that prohibits leeching?

Deidbell Gilded Sallet has mod Cannot Leech when on Low Life

Infractem bow also prevents Leech but that wouldn't explain WI

If you were testing it against other players, they might have the 'bloodless' notable as well (or Sin trek, or the Vertex).

Deidbell (or Deidbellow) wouldn't have an effect on a CI character.

Note that 2% of 9k dps is 180 damage leeched per second, assuming a single target. If your ES is 6k then you can leech up to 1200 ES per second.
I can see why you might not notice this amount using hiltless.
With Whispering Ice - what is your INT? It doesn't do much damage if you have low int, so maybe you aren't doing enough dps with it to proc much leech.

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dudiobugtron wrote:

If you were testing it against other players, they might have the 'bloodless' notable as well (or Sin trek, or the Vertex).

Deidbell (or Deidbellow) wouldn't have an effect on a CI character.

Note that 2% of 9k dps is 180 damage leeched per second, assuming a single target. If your ES is 6k then you can leech up to 1200 ES per second.
I can see why you might not notice this amount using hiltless.
With Whispering Ice - what is your INT? It doesn't do much damage if you have low int, so maybe you aren't doing enough dps with it to proc much leech.

Whispering ice is doing roughly 1k dps per hit with around 800 int

It is odd because my friend is doing the exact same thing and his build leeches just fine, I have even gone as far to spec out then back into ghost reaver to make sure I have not forgotten.

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SaiyanZ wrote:

What spells are you using? When it comes to low damage per hit spells, the rounding down of leech becomes important. Eg. With 2% leech and Blade Vortex that does less than 50 damage per hit, you leech nothing at all. The dps may be high with certain skills but you'll have zero leech.

I am using Ice nova, Ethereal knives, elemental weakness, glacial cascade, firestorm, arc, shock nova, magma orb, vortex, blade vortex and bladefall on my high level CoDT

on my low level CoDT I use arctic breath, warlords mark, and later I plan to put skeletons in there once I figure out my leech situation along with my discipline aura

This still doesn't help to explain why my life version of the build can leech just fine. The more I look into this the more I am convinced this is a bug and not something I am overlooking

-Thanks for the advice!

Is it possible to make your characters visible, so we can check it out as well?

I assume your Warlord's mark is the correct level to be linked to CWDT, and isn't in some item with another trigger gem as a corrupted implicit.