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?