Life Leech Nerf Over the Top

I thought this whole patch was suppose to shift the bias the range always had back to a more balanced state were melee wasn't inferior. And yet the patch released with a huge nerf to life leech mechanics. I don't understand the reasoning to this. A minor nerf I could understand, but melee is back in a place where it's inferior to range and casters again. I hope GGG seriously reconsiders the drastic leech nerf.

I also think evasion needs a serious look. The whole right side of the tree needs some serious mechanic and balance tweaks to defensive options.

Least it wasn't completely removed aka D3

Running a melee char, pretty OP, mandatory fortify sucks doe (or I can drop it and take 20% extra ele dam, hahahaha good one).....
Try regen, your life will totally change.

It does get a bit silly that I'm better off with regen than leech in single target, have to take off blood rage whenever I'm fighting a boss cause that 1.2% life leech is pointless. Increased recovery per second is too small to really make a difference and costs way too many passive points to bother with.
Even if they halved the nerf, letting you get 4% life per hit per enemy up to 20% instead of the current 2% per hit per enemy up to 20%, that wouldn't make increased recovery overpowered. Even with the 100% from cherubium you'd only get 8% per second against single targets (instead of the current 4%).

It also means any big hit or high leech % is kinda crap without vaal pact. Better off with 0.4% and a fast hitting aoe ability than anything else.

Running at 4.74% Leech, with 23k dps Reave, and Vaal Pact.

Its noticeable. But with lower DPS, its basically pointless.

2.0% gem
2.0% warlords
0.4% Node
0.34% Master mod on gloves

Try double curse with Warlord's / Poacher's for leech and LoH. Or Warlord's / Assassin's for leech and LoK.

You can still get ALOT of leech in the game. You just have to "make it your build" instead of having an insane build with 20% leech on TOP of everything.

Life Gain on Hit is amazing until very, very late in a character's life cycle. AFAICT, leech is for extremely high damage characters only. Claws make for a pretty great dagger substitute, and LGoH is an easy swap for a previous LL gem.

This does leave casters out in the cold, though, since LGoH is almost entirely "on Attacks".

Single target is just horrific now, playing an uce crash crit staff mara, vs singlr targrt i can only atk like 3-5times depending on my crit rng, if i cant kill itin 5hits, every second attack is an auto attack, and as soon as my 3 life flasks run out i have to portal. Luckily most bosses die in less than 9 hits or have lots of delicous ads

Yeah Val pact or insane attack speed or soo much dps things die before you run out of flasks, not sure about geting some imba crit with surgeons.

You wanna cap leech? Use a gem and maybe even 1 cluster. Or maybe go full leech itemization and skip that.

You need either very high damage or investment into points and gear affixes, then it still works fine. The dependance on high attack speed for no VP builds is really weird though.