What does "On Hit" *really* mean?

I noticed while playing that things like "Life Gain on Hit" does not apply do spell damage, and I can understand why. AoE spells and spells that make small repeated attacks (such as incinerate) can generate tons of HP this way.


Then I spotted a monster. Magic, so he had a random buff. "Gains Power charge on Hit"

The problem is, it's a spell casting skeleton.

It gains a power charge when it hits you with a spell.

This seems to happen with every single spellcasting enemy that has an "On Hit" benefit to it, but it doesn't apply to players with supports like Life Gain on Hit.

This seems confusing to me, as a player, why one phrase means different for players than it does for creatures.

Personally, not allowing Life Gain on Hit for spells is perfectly fine for me, but at the same time, monsters having an alternate that allows them to do what you can't with the same wording just seems unfair.

I suggest either rewording the buff, or making the buff not apply to spells from creatures. (Most likely rewording)

Life Gain on Hit specifically says that it works with attacks. Spells are not attacks. The monsters that have the "on hit" affixes do not specify that it has to be a hit with an attack, just a hit.

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Ezhiel wrote:

Life Gain on Hit specifically says that it works with attacks. Spells are not attacks. The monsters that have the "on hit" affixes do not specify that it has to be a hit with an attack, just a hit.

Beat me to it. The name of a gem doesn't always exactly tell you all it does, always read the entire tooltip to be sure.

And monsters play by a little different set of rules than ours. They have access to more powerful auras and totems, charges also have increased effect on them, meaning monsters with endurance charges get more than 5% damage reduction and resists per charge. Their curses also work better then ours, ever noticed how much health are those bozos in pools&streams stealing?

I understand that Life Gain on Hit applies to attacks only.


My issue is that they use the same wording for different effects.

How would you feel if the Mana Leech gem applied to physical damage only while the Life Leech was any damage?

On that same note: Those gems behave differently as well. Life Leech isn't instantaneous but Mana Leech is.


My issue is not with how they behave, I'm fine with that. The issue is the fact that the same verbiage is used for a different mechanic. This isn't about it being stronger, its the fact that it's mechanically different with the same verbiage.

If Spells don't "Hit" then the monster needs it's ability name changed.

If Spells do hit, then "Life Gain on Hit" should be changed to reflect it.

I understand reading the gem tells you more about it, but it makes it appear, on the outside, that the abilities work the same when they don't.

Like I said before, I understand creature abilities are often stronger, but abilities that are congruent to player abilities: Viper Strike, Flicker Strike, etc. all act the same mechanically, regardless of power.

LGoH only works with attacks. This is a totally arbitrary divider, but GGG says spells are not attacks and only count as spells, so therefore LGoH does not work with them. The description says as much (if you know GGG's definition of "Attacks"...)

+(6 to 44) Life gained for each enemy hit by your Attacks

The game, due to the frankly bizarre way a lot of mechanics happen to work, has to put a lot of stuff in tooltips. It's simply the reality of their system.

Mana Leech and Life Leech working different is just another unknown thing the game expects you to just test to find out.

Now that life gain on hit is scaled with damage effectiveness, skills like incinerate wouldn't generate anywhere near as much health. I'm not sure that life gain on hit would be OP if it applied to spells too, since they could no longer generate way more health than comparable attacks.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

The wording of LGoH is not "Life Gain on Hit" - it's "X Life gained for each enemy hit by your attacks"

The name of a gem is not an in depth description of what it does. It is not the wording that describers the effect. It's just a name that conveys the general effect. The actual wording of the effect is displayed on the gem when looking at the stats it provides, and clearly applies only to attacks.

How about "X% Increased Physical Damage"? If you compare to "X% Increased Spell Damage", they both say the same, but have different meanings. Not very consistent... and, for example with EK/Bear Trap/Shockwave Totem, misleading.