How to fix Life based builds with a single gem

EZ Game

That gem wouldn't fix anything.

trolls everywhere :D

imho, the problem with life is more related to the fact that it needs extra defenses to be effective and those defenses in general are in a rather bad spot.
For CI, you just need resists, high ES pool and instant leech/fast recharge/es regen.
For life, you need high armor + endurance charges or evasion + dodge or block, all of these require extra investment besides hp on tree, as opposed to ES where you can take most es and es recharge nodes on your path and you're set.
The fundamental issue is one-shots, even with all the mechanics above, life still can't survive hard hitting abilities.
Not to mention that both life and ci benefit from enfeeble/temp chains and IC.
Your aura will help, but i feel that GGG would be better off rethinking their defenses to be on par with content instead of making life values closer to CI.

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Effreti wrote:

The fundamental issue is one-shots, even with all the mechanics above, life still can't survive hard hitting abilities.

Yup. Currently playing a build that felt kinda godlike while mapping, but one hit from a slightly buffed uber Izaro was enough to take me back to earth. My character from past league could tank fully buffed uber Izaro with all that ES/leech.

50% mana reserved
15% more life
fortify with 20% inc effect

That just makes it worst what the fuck lol

"

Effreti wrote:

imho, the problem with life is more related to the fact that it needs extra defenses to be effective and those defenses in general are in a rather bad spot.
For CI, you just need resists, high ES pool and instant leech/fast recharge/es regen.
For life, you need high armor + endurance charges or evasion + dodge or block, all of these require extra investment besides hp on tree, as opposed to ES where you can take most es and es recharge nodes on your path and you're set.
The fundamental issue is one-shots, even with all the mechanics above, life still can't survive hard hitting abilities.
Not to mention that both life and ci benefit from enfeeble/temp chains and IC.
Your aura will help, but i feel that GGG would be better off rethinking their defenses to be on par with content instead of making life values closer to CI.

CI builds suffer greatly from a lack of armor. In fact, physical damage does a number on CI based builds. It prevents chaos damage but at the cost of losing all regen (unless you stop taking damage and that can be hard at times).

ES is simply a large pool of health with a special property to replenish itself after no damage taken from a set interval. The power of CI based builds are in this large health pool. And that is directly a result of using Discipline, which adds about an additional 2k health pool at high hero levels.

I'm not sure what you mean by extra defenses. Both HP and ES have nothing to do with evasion or armor or dodge or anything else. They are just large pools of health. Having a gem that provides flat life, like Discipline, would simply give life base builds a chance to get 10k life without needing Kaom's, that's all.

you are comparing life and CI objectively, but you also need to take into account the distribution on the tree.Not all life builds have the luxury of instant leech, with the exception of certain items. Your proposal with increase the life, yes, but you still need to fix the situation where one mob hits you for 80% of hp. What do you do now? Considering your armor/eva is not something you invested in:
-You try to regen, on a RF char I did i had around 13%hp regen from tree per second. that won't be enough for next hit.
- you try to leech, but unless you have really high leech or are a zerker, it's unlikely you have the time.
- you pop your instant flasks, but this can only save you a few times. if boss doesn't have adds or you are in a bad phase, it's gg

With armor, eva/dodge or block, it becomes much easier to survive. With eva and block you have the time to leech back to full hp, with armor you take less damage from phys.
Life builds can be of the far left side, where you have a lot of hp, or on the right side, where hp is lower, but you have access to vaal pact. In both cases, your aura will increase the hp, but the problem with the builds will still be there, plus you forgo a damage aura or another defensive curse/aura.

Point is you can get the same benefit from the above with CI + higher lifepool + instant leech on ES.

This gem would change nothing in regards to the fundamental issue of ES vs Life.

It has been for years that one will simply be better than the other and they have even become closer mechanicwise thanks to a lot of uniques and general changes (ex.: ailment immunities on flasks).

The big reason why ES ist stronger currently is obviously because it offers a bigger healthsponge, which is necessary because of the ridicolous spike dmg. This is not simply fixed by increasing the healthsponge on the side of life, as it would simply switch to a life meta from a certain point onwards.

To balance ES vs Life in a way that both can be viable at the same time you have to mainly adjust monster dmg (less spikes => hp sponge not the only option, armour becomes more effective, evasion becomes a chance to sustain agianst the eventual hit), sustain options(ES should not have the same capability to sustain in fight as Life has, the focus should be on ES recharge(more/quicker options depending on build)), and emphasise their differences to create different gameplay patterns.