How much life and life regen before getting blood magic?

I was in the same situation as the OP. Personally I found when I did finally take BM it was easy. Hardly noticed it. Definitely take it sooner, even 2% regen will suffice for some time.

I seem to have sparked a debate that was well outside the OP's question.

All I was really trying to point out is that this question is kind of hard to answer. It depends on your situation entirely. If you have enough regen to support blood magic, well, you still need more regen to support survival. So just try it and see how it plays.

If you don't want to commit your build to it, just try linking a support at first.

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Zakaluka wrote:

If you don't want to commit your build to it, just try linking a support at first.

that's a bad idea. The support has a mana cost multiplier of 250% at level one. Casting your skills at over twice the cost isn't really indicative of how well the build will play. It would more than likely dissuade a lot of people from taking the passive.

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Zakaluka wrote:

Every single time: you die faster for having blood magic linked, or picking up the blood magic passive.

I disagree, Blood Magic allows you to have more life flasks and just one extra "oh crap" instant recovery flask will nullify that disadvantage quite swiftly.

That said, managing Mana isn't hard or impossible for most melee skills, so the laziness of using Blood Magic is more convenience for most than anything.

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If you don't want to commit your build to it, just try linking a support at first.

The results with the support gem have to be taken with a grain of salt as the cost is ridiculous (at first).

Haven't taken the leap to BM, yet, but this thread has given me a lotta food for thought, at least. I'm already in a position to simply click the node, whenever I'm ready, and I do have all these otherwise useless respec points piling up, so... I might give it a try. =^[.]^=

I always find when I take BM, its never been an issue to upkeep. Even rushing for BM, its never been too early, and has always been far easier to maintain than mana at the level (which always get neglected knowing BM is coming). Remember you get 5 life flasks, which give more than mana flasks. You don't constantly attack, and its easy to get +life/hit (better at low levels, imo).

Worst case, you can spend an orb of regret and wait longer.

I'm using bloodmagic, and i like it, however, there is so many aura's i'd like to use and it isn't possible with bloodmagic keynode, so i'm planning once i get my hands on armor /w 5 or 6 linked sockets of right colour, i'm gonna throw that bloodmagic node away, and simply put bloodmagic support gem on that my spam skill, i know it takes 250% life more per hit, but when skills costs 10 to use, 25 isn't that much ? this way i get 2 aura's more AND benefir of bloodmagic, and 2 more aura's = lots of useful benefit's, such as armor, all resist, attack speed, etc.

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Zakaluka wrote:

I play hardcore only. Please realize that my opinion is heavily influenced by that choice. From my point of view, blood magic is never worth it.

I thought this too when I took it too early without enough regen/life on attack/life on kill.

But now I have so much regen, plus gem links to health on hit, plus tons of +health +life +life on kill nodes that I can basically spam any attack I want without my health bar changing in the least. Even if I'm not hitting something, it barely even matters. And I can never run out of mana again.

(I play HC as well)

If you get all the life and regen nodes at the mara start and on the way to BM you'll likely be fine taking it right away, however I like to wait until I get Golem's Blood at the duelist start as well.

I like the reduced complexity of only needing life flasks and +life. Flasks with the "sapping" mod (60% increased amount recovered, 10% removed from mana) have no downside with BM and recover huge amounts of life (sapping/iron skin being my fav).

You do have to give up some tasty auras that reserve %'s though (i.e. hatred). Anger and grace don't reserve that much, especially with reduced mana cost linked.

On the flip side, my staff templar with clarity rarely needs to use mana flasks and can get away with only having 1.