A serious look at Blood Rage, the most broken gem in the game

Okay so we have this nifty little gem that everyone has kept ignoring for literally years, while it has remained one of the most overpowered gems in the game. I'm talking about Blood Rage of course.

Let's investigate what a maxed Blood Rage gives, using a lvl 20 gem, quality 23 and supported by a level 4 enhance in a build using inner force.


How much power does Blood Rage grant:

Attack speed on Low Life:

(39% + (23 + 24)*0.75%) * 1.21

= 89.8%


Physical Life Leech(LL):

(6% + (23 + 24)*0.2%) * 1.21

= 18.6%


On top of that it gives a player Frenzy Charges, which for most builds will be 3 giving an extra 15% Attack Speed.

Therefore a maxed bloodrage provides:

104.8% Attack Speed at Low Life
18.6% Physical Life Leech with Attacks


Probably at least 50% overall damage increase for Low Life attackers from the Attack Speed alone, before considering increased uptime on Shocks and Freezes which will respectively increase your damage and your survivability greatly, even if your character pane does not show it.


The drawbacks of using bloodrage:

There is but one single drawback. You lose at best 3.8% of your Maximum Life per second as Chaos Damage

Some might say that increased Attack Speed has the drawback of increasing mana costs over time, but i do not consider that a good argument, you basically gain free Attack Speed. Also, with Atziri's gloves you can instant Leech Mana which means means it makes no difference.


What builds are tapping into this power:

The users least benefiting are the CI users, who can never use the Lowlife Attack Speed, but do get Frenzy Charges and sometimes the leech for free. That is completely non-problematic, maybe except that the leech is too massive for a no-brainer gem with no drawbacks, it's basically the same as full LL gear and LL gem.

Physical Attack builds pick the gem for the Life Leech. Both Life and ES builds do that, and they manage to cope with the degeneration, even pure life builds. Sometimes when they are almost dead they will gain the lowlife bonus until they heal back up. Non-problematic.

Low-life Builds. Here we have the big abuser, the build who will constantly gain the over 100% Attack Speed increase. Low-Life builds are always using Energy Shield, and Blood Rage deals Chaos Damage based on only Life. In effect that means the drawback of Blood Rage is nearly non-existent, even for all the users who anyway completely ignore Chaos Resistance and just have -60%. It drains less than 1% ES per second for a good Lowlife build. If you unequip the gem it will even fall off, for that once every 100 gameplay hours that might come in handy.

People who can afford Low-life builds generally can also afford Atziri's gloves, meaning the 18.6% extra leech will make them near-immortal and give them the ability to completely ignore reflect and anything else, as long as they are not oneshotted. For a low-life user the Blood Rage gem gives you possibly more than 50% damage while making you immortal and able to stop caring for reflects or pretty much anything else. That is why it is the most broken gem in the game.


Possible Solutions:

The most basic thing that needs to be addressed with Blood Rage is its sheer power. It simply gives way way way too much, it's out of control. In particular richer builds who can afford quality gems and enhance gain much more than they should, therefore the quality bonus has to be reduced, and the numbers need to be adjusted.

That could look like:

Attack speed:

29% base(level 20), 0.5% per quality

Maxed potential: 78.5% Attack Speed


Physical Attack Life Leech:

5% Base(level 20), 0.1% per quality

Maxed potential: 11.7% Life Leech

-------------------------------------------------------

There are some more loose ideas i had floating around my head. I'll just leave them as things to think about.

- Blood Rage does not fall off by removing the gem
- Blood Rage drains ES as well as Life
- Blood Rage only drains Life/ES when on low life


The first was to, like Righteous Fire, make sure it does not fall off if you remove the gem. You want to gain high power and infuse your blood with rage, you also deal with the consequences. You need to let that rage expire naturally or flee to town.

I also consider the drawback of Blood Rage to be next to completely irrelevant in nearly all cases. Therefore i would like to see it changed, like Rigtheous Fire was, to also drain based on ES. An alternative way that would not impact the regular CI user, and not rob more of the almost non-existant cast speed increases, would be to simply have Blood Rage drain only when on Low Life, where it would drain both ES and Life as Chaos Damage.

It may also be interesting to give it Cast Speed bonuses, because attackers just get everything it seems, while casters just a small fraction of those increases.


Does anyone else have any good ideas how you would go about it?

I am the light of the morning and the shadow on the wall, I am nothing and I am all.
Last edited by Crackmonster on Jul 27, 2014, 9:29:12 AM
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Reword Shavronne's Wrappings (et al) as "Chaos Damage from Enemies does not bypass Energy Shield." Notice the difference?

Then keep everything else precisely the same.
When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
Last edited by ScrotieMcB on Jul 26, 2014, 11:18:56 AM
Yea i notice, though i believe the gem has exclusively too much power, and that change would also stop low-lifers from using blood rage at all.

EDIT: Actually it wouldn't they'd, grab some regen nodes and they'd still reap the full power.
I am the light of the morning and the shadow on the wall, I am nothing and I am all.
Last edited by Crackmonster on Jul 26, 2014, 11:24:21 AM
"
Crackmonster wrote:
Yea i notice, though i believe the gem has exclusively too much power, and that change would also stop low-lifers from using blood rage at all.
Not really. It would might just make them stack life regeneration. Low-life is actually pretty good at that particular task.

I don't know. I'm tired. I'll think about this later. It's not that I've thought of something better than your suggestions, it's that I think I can. That, and I don't like your suggestions.

Until then I'll just agree that ~100% increased attack speed on low life does seem to be a pretty ridiculous situation and should probably be curbed somehow for the Shavronne's type of builds.
When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
Last edited by ScrotieMcB on Jul 26, 2014, 11:28:14 AM
It's a way, it would mean even higher gear/level requirements to low-life builds, needs regen and chaos res. Two positive outcomes. Though i would still prefer not to build the niche for CI to the THE endbuild that is far better than anything else. I'd rather have it slightly more accessible and more in balance with the rest of the game than ultra hard to build and godlike overpowered raping all other builds.
I am the light of the morning and the shadow on the wall, I am nothing and I am all.
Last edited by Crackmonster on Jul 26, 2014, 11:31:12 AM
This is yet another example of the folly of GGG's stubborn refusal to engineer realistic caps and diminishing returns on fundamental game mechanics. In Diablo II, your Effective Increased Attack Speed (EIAS) was calculated by a simple diminishing returns formula:

EIAS = (120*IAS)/(120+IAS) - (WSM) + (SIAS)

WSM: base weapon speed modifier
IAS: total increased attack speed from gear
SIAS: total increased attack speed from skills

The beneficial result of this formula was that a player could increase attack speed with a wide variety of buffs that could be tuned individually. When combined, these buffs would eventually cap out with diminishing returns that kept attack speed below a realistic maximum specific to each weapon type. That gave players flexibility in optimizing attack speed while giving Blizzard the leeway to craft Uniques with dramatic IAS buffs that worked effectively without disrupting overall game balance.

For example a Buriza-Do Kyanon crossbow had a built-in 80% IAS mod, but its +10 WSM rating limited its maximum attack rate to less than 2 APS. By contrast, a Demon Machine crossbow with its -60 WSM required no additional IAS to fire just as quickly as a maxed out Buriza, and could be accelerated to over 3 APS. Crossbows, in turn, could never reach as quick an attack rate as the fastest bows.

http://classic.battle.net/diablo2exp/items/exceptional/ucrossbows.shtml
Last edited by RogueMage on Jul 26, 2014, 5:21:56 PM
That's interesting, i didn't even know that about D2.

On another note, i just wanted to add a few more thoughts here to put things in perspective.

We all know how extremely much the costs goes up from a 4L->5L->6L item. You should think there was some sort of reasoning behind that.

Blood rage is roughly equivalent of 2 free Faster Attacks + A Life Leech gem, and you don't even need to link it.


I am the light of the morning and the shadow on the wall, I am nothing and I am all.
The mistake you make in all your calculations is that you first put BR in the context of a build that for instance uses low life, but mark BR as the problem directly.

And also the effort and investment of speccing into a min-maxed build like low life seem to be no factor at all according to you.

Why don't you want to address low life directly for example and when are you finally going to decide what ingredient of the build is the problem?
You already posted topics about nerfs to:
-Shavs
-CoE
-Auras
-CoC
-Blood Rage
Last edited by Startkabels on Jul 26, 2014, 8:30:40 PM
Oh, its Crack crying again, make another 2000 threads about same thing please, ty.
I wrote a long response explaining why it's not worth discussing whos right and whos wrong and bla bla with you Startkabels, but now i've deleted it to protect you from the truth about yourself.

Once you start saying something worthwhile i'll be happy to discuss with you, meanwhile just stick to the topic.

Thanks.
I am the light of the morning and the shadow on the wall, I am nothing and I am all.

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