Blood Magic still weak
" When the above 1.0.0 patchnotes were released, many players complained about the implications of flat cost auras changing to 40-60% reservation. It seemed obvious at the time that BM keystone builds would not be able to run any auras at all. Chris, apparently surprised by our reactions, made some reassuring statements pointing out that the other changes to auras and the passive tree would more than compensate for this change. " Path of Exile 1.0 was released and it's been 5 weeks and two major patches since then. We figured out the new passive tree, the "meta" is established, there is no ambiguity regarding our options for running auras. So where are we at?
By "heavy passive investment" I mean 20+ passive points spent on getting (and reaching) most reduced reservation nodes on the tree. This is achievable for Scion, any other class has to make do with less or blow an extra ~10 points on travel. Blood Magic cannot viably run any aura. Not only do you lose a substantial amount of survivability from the reserved health, you will further cripple your build by using up passives you could spend on health/mitigation or damage. Whether you want to completely ignore aura passives in your build, or go all in, or anything inbetween, Blood Magic keystone is the worst option, far inferior to mana-sustained or BM support gem builds. ========================= It's already obvious from Chris' original responses and the symbolic IGN: Torrenz Nemesis Shop: view-thread/634031 Last edited by Torrenz on Feb 13, 2015, 4:45:59 AM
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There is a Keynode behind Blood Magic that should help with Aura-cost.
Alexis
*smiles* =@[.]@= boggled =~[.]^= naughty wink | |
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actually auras having flat manacost is in favor of bloodmagic, i dunno what was chris thinkin
bring auras back to their previous state and with mortal convition already there it would be actually much stronger (you could be running old grace + wrath + anger on life without loosing too much hp) on the other hand with current state of auras we would need like 80%-90% on mortal conviction to even consider bloodmagic (loosing 20% hp from 2 auras and 1 point commitment is what i call being even, but still going 2-3 auras on mana + phys based attacks with 2-3% manaleech + utility spells on bloodmagic gem would be way better) @up: no sh1t sherlock IGN: FifthCIShadow (HC League) Last edited by thormond on Dec 2, 2013, 2:10:28 AM
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It's obvious, that blood magic benefits alone arent worth drawbacks it causes. Mortal Conviction is just a badly designed passive. When a player takes Blood Magic, he actually choses dont use any auras (drawbacks for their use are insane), but gains easy resource management. With 40% reduced reserve cost or without, auras will cause too high drawback. It's the same as putting "40% increased ES" behind Acrobatics.
Why dont change Mortal Conviction to something like "12% more life"? Or "30% more life regeneration"? Or some other bonus, which will really benefit Blood Mаgic users. IGN: MortalKombat
Molten Strike build guide: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1346504 There is no knowledge That is not power |
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BM is strong that it needs some severe drawback, being able to only reliably run 1 aura (with very minimal investment) is IMO fine.
With heavy investment you could possibly run 3 auras with 30% life reservation, but that would be pretty specialized and pointless build. I believe they put that notable there so that BM users could run that single aura without any other investment because 1 aura is pretty much mandatory. 0.6*0,71 is 42% which is then cut down to 40% with that single -5% cost node nearby, which is further reduced to 24% with the notable. 24% for 2 points investment is pretty decent IMO. | |
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Every point of HP is important. Anyone who have played the game for a while, went to merci, and lost about 2-3 character on HC maps would know that. But considering the XP drop penalty from dying, i think the SC players are aware of that fact too. Before the changes there were some builds: mostly some ele (LA) rangers(maras), or ele cleave duelists, but that was it. (I mean OK builds, made with thinking about endgame playstyle, not random test bulds made by noobies). You know it, and I know it. Runnin' wrath, anger... and/or grace. Actually these 2-3 auras didn't boosted the damage so further to make the BM build OP. In fact these 3 were compansating the lack of damage/defence of the build, because it is already crippled in DPS, because of the investment in HP nodes, HP regen, to sustain these 3 auras, and of course to have enough (which is never enough) HP to survive. These people still needed the Life gain on hit and/or the life leech gem inserted per DPS skill, because the 2% life steal from physical node and the mods on items were not enough at all, because the effective builds with BM were mainly ELE damage dealers. Even before the changes, BM users were doing this builds because its cheap, (or because bored of usual builds) but not because its effective ! Just think about it ? What do you win when you drop dead your mana pool ? More HP ? -no, More defence ? -no, More survivability ? -no ... Ele resistances ? - no (so needed in this game) .... More damage ? - still no. No you are not winning anythng, except that you ARE forced to invest points in HP nodes (and to get to them), regen etc. without even using auras.. forced to get life leech, forced to use a leech gem or LgoH... to sustain your DPS skills mana(HP) requirements. I wonder why would anyone do that ? ... at least for the CI you drop your HP pool, but you get some more ES nodes, and gain full immunity to the tricky chaos dmg in this game... but the BM keystone. I really think the idea of BM is impressive, but there should be some improvements... not just "hey why shouldn't i drop my mana pool, because my DPS skill is mana hungry", a noob player would do that, but at the end, he will realize, that ain' a good idea. 30%-40% MC... even if you make it 60% this ain' working, considering the fact that the node Mortal conviction is not stacking with the reduced mana gem. What I mean ?! ... 60% aura with Mortal conviction (40% reduction) will reduce the aura by 24% so you will lose 36% of your life for running that 1 single 60% aura. If you put a 20 lvl reduced mana gem (71% reduced mana cost multiplier) you are NOT reducing the mana reserved for that 60% aura by: 29%(gem)+40%Mortal conviction=69% reduction - so the mana needed for tha aura is reduced by 41,4%, and you reserve 19,6% of your HP (which is still HIGH as hell), no its not working that way :) .. In fact you reduce the mana reservation by 40% - you now reserve 36% of your HP, and then Reduce THESE 36% by another 29% (from them gem) so you lose 25.56% of your life, not 19,6% (as you may think). Best case scenario... put some investment in passive nodes, reduce by another 20%, Alpha howl, gem, MC, and maybe, just maybe, run one 40% aura, reduced to like 10-12% of your HP. Me, personally, i wouldnt do that... but its your choice :) I'd rather get 1-2 passives for mana regen, put 2, maybe 3 auras on my mana, then put clarity on a reduced mana, and BM gem, to deal with the mana issues.. or just put a mana leech gem if i am ele build, or use 2-4% from gear if I am physical DPS. Plenty of better solutions, and BM ain' one of these.
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" after going through this wall of text: BM's main advantage is the fact that you can easily sustain a very high mana cost skill, p.e. a dominating blow costing upwards to 200+ /cast, while with mana this wold be impossible. even on normal skills, the cost of a 5-6l attack goes up to ~40. Given that a lot of those builds have attack speeds up to 6-9 skills /second, that means that you would either need so huge mana regen (200-300mp/sec) that for a HP build it would be impossible OR that you are forced to use a mana leech gem. On the other hand the life leech (which you are either way already using) returning 40hp less (when it returns close to 900/sec with just 10k dps) is more than fine to sustain every single cost in the game without sacrificing a single node for mana/mana regen/etc. So, the advantage of BM is +1gem (in place of mana leech) that is usually at least 10-20%+ more damage, and you free up all those passives from mana allowing you to build even more health and damage. as for how the game actually calculates the aura cost this is how: 60% * 71% (support gem costs always go first)= 0,426. The game removes any and all decals after the second, so that goes to 42% 42%* 5% (the game then goes to passives starting from reduced/increased modifiers, in my example i used a single 5% reservation node that was near the BM) = 0,021. This becomes 2% 42%-2%= 40% 40% *40% = 16% 40%-16%= 24% so final cost with only 1 passive for reduced mana is 24% for each 60% aura. You can get this as low as total reservation = 30% for 2 60% auras + 1 40% aura with full aura passives +alpha's howl but this is really niche and fail build as i said above (a friend of mine did it and it fails at hard content for so much investment) so to recap: BM DOES give you more damage in the form of 1 free link, and DOES give you free passive points due to not needing any mana nodes. Last edited by shroudb on Dec 2, 2013, 10:34:15 AM
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Auras with BM builds are not really viable.
I run a lvl 78 Scion that basically goes near every reduced reservation passive and it's still not beneficial for me to invest 16 points into getting them at all, just to be able to run ONE aura for a cost of around 19% of my life. Instead, I can just get more life. I can't imagine what kind of investement is needed for builds that are naturally not going very near reduced reservation passives. So I'm doing lvl 71 maps with no auras, kinda struggling, but I'm still doing better than with auras. I tried running grace and got destroyed in maps, so respeced almost 14 points to be able to actually play the game. 40% less reservations is an OK number IF you have a prism guardian and alpha howls. And that's a shitty way to balance your game. Edit: also, that's a nice theorycrafting, but try playing some maps with 3200/4000 life and 1 aura vs 4500/4500 life and no auras and let me know which seems easier. Also, to the point that you get +1 skill gem with BM, that's not really true, as most builds, if they are physical, can just take 1% mana leech on ring or from passive and be ok. By going BM, you are losing on one valuable resource, and that's a fact. Most of my builds now run 2 auras on mana and use skills with BM gem. It's actually better than going BM passive. I'd give anything if GGG would present some server statistic and show how many people are playing BM and how many auras are being used on average. „I don't give a fuck if it was his tenth anniversary with his goddamn neckbeard...“ „If they think I'm going to let them sweep this pizza guy thing under the rug...“ No mod action. Business as usual. Last edited by Odoakar on Dec 2, 2013, 11:32:00 AM
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I want to know why he said they were stronger than ever, when in fact nobody fucking uses the BM passive anymore :) GGG don't have a clue about there own game.
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" After checking your character list, all I see is that you're theory crafting, instead of actually testing how the things go on 70+ map stuff... not to mention HC building... when you do that, using BM, with build made by you, running 70+ stuff, come back and tell me more by your experience, but not by what you have read in POE wiki. I am not here to argue. If you want we can do that... you choose the equipment, chose the build, the skills etc.... Post it here, give me 20 mins, and the chance to replace 20 (not all but 20) of the passive nodes, you have used. I can bet with you that the build will have both higher survivability And/Or higher damage than your Auraless BM cartoon, and still be able to sustain the mana needed for skills., no matter if i replace a dmg support gem with BM gem, or mana leech gem.... considering the fact that all the auras are buffed nowadays... determination 50% more armor - 10k armor to 15k - from 40% damage reduction to 60%. Grace same... even if i choose to put the 3 new Ele resist auras for 40% mana reservation each, to cap my ele resistances with 5% more to maximum which is about taking 20% less damage from elemental atacks, that makes HUGE difference than your 15-20% dps for that slot from mana leech gem.... Actually when I activate them i will raise all ele resistances by 40% and be able to put even more HP/ES/Armor items neglecting the ele resists, OR use ELE dmg rings to cover that lack of DPS.from that slot. The only good thing about BM is convenience for new players OR for casual players, that don't like pushing their survivability or Damage to the limits. There were barely few nice higher level builds of BM in the old version, and even then not the very best that can be achieved, but fun... now ? there are no such, the difference with 1-2 aura or without IS HUGE, no matter if you play in party or Solo, and cannot be compared to the benefits of convenience not having mana issues. It is simple as that. If anyone can prove me wrong, please post an active BM build of a 80+ with its stats shown. I would really love to see someone breaking the "myth" that BM is garbage at its current form. Btw: thanks for the info on the math, that usefull ! And that's not sarcasm. |
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